“We Do Not Know Where Ghasib’s Spies Are Or How Much He Knows.

“It would not be good enough for you merely to say you are with me. You would have to be actually with me here,” Ashraf insisted.

“You mean, to convince them that I’m in position and can be activated whenever they choose,” Dana said flatly.

Ashraf bent his head.

Dana was furious suddenly. “And what do I say when they give me a vial of poison to feed you, or ask me to take you to such and such a place so they can use you for target practice? What if they trick me? What if they’ve already tricked me? What if there’s a bomb in my suitcase or a…an inhalant poison in my perfume or something?”

He looked at her. Not poison, but intoxication, he thought. And just as dangerous.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with six passionate, powerful and provocative romances! And you can take romance one step further…. Look inside for details about our exciting new contest, “Silhouette Makes You a Star.”

Popular author Mary Lynn Baxter returns to Desire with our MAN OF THE MONTH when The Millionaire Comes Home to Texas to reunite with the woman he could never forget. Rising star Sheri WhiteFeather’s latest story features a Comanche Vow that leads to a marriage of convenience…until passionate love transforms it into the real thing.

It’s our pleasure to present you with a new miniseries entitled 20 AMBER COURT, featuring four twentysomething female friends who share an address…and their discoveries about life and love. Don’t miss the launch title, When Jayne Met Erik, by beloved author Elizabeth Bevarly. The scandalous Desire miniseries FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS continues with Fortune’s Secret Daughter by Barbara McCauley. Alexandra Sellers offers you another sumptuous story in her miniseries SONS OF THE DESERT: THE SULTANS, Sleeping with the Sultan. And the talented Cindy Gerard brings you a touching love story about a man of honor pledged to marry an innocent young woman with a secret, in The Bridal Arrangement.

Treat yourself to all six of these tantalizing tales from Silhouette Desire.

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Sleeping with the Sultan
Alexandra Sellers

MILLS & BOON

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For

Leslie Wainger and Isabel Swift,

who thought I should write about sheikhs.

ALEXANDRA SELLERS

is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.

What she would miss most on a desert island is shared laughter.

Readers can write to Alexandra at P.O. Box 9449, London NW3 2WH, England.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

One

“Look, it’s Reena!”

“She looks so different in real life!”

“What a dress!”

“Wow, she’s practically naked!”

Dana Morningstar paused at the top of the short flight of steps leading down into the bar as the whispers ran in a little ripple around the rapidly filling room.

“Isn’t she wearing anything under it?”

“She’s so beautiful!”

“My dear, you are a ravishingly wanton nun tonight,” said a gravelly, perfectly produced voice at her elbow, and she turned with a smile to greet one of the great theatrical “Sirs” of the old school who had entered just behind her.

“Hello, Sir Henry, how nice to see you.”

“And how lovely to see you, Dana. Who, if I may ask, designed that very dashing frock for you?”

The very dashing frock consisted of a double layer of shimmery, sheer white fabric with a high, straight neckline, wrist-length sleeves, and a long skirt. By a trick of the light playing on the two layers of fabric, it looked opaque, and very demure, but at moments, with certain movements, it became almost fully transparent. Her warm mocha skin glowed through the fabric, and underneath she was wearing only a skin-coloured thong.

Dana smiled and put her hand on the arm Sir Henry offered, stepping down into the bar at his side as people gazed entranced. “Kamila,” she told him in an undervoice. “A new designer launching here in the autumn. She says this dress is going to make her name.”

Dana’s black hair, long and thick, fell like a cloak around her shoulders and down her back. Her makeup was expertly applied to enhance her dark, heavy-lashed eyes and high, strong cheekbones. She wore delicate tan-coloured sandals and carried a tiny bag.

“On anyone but yourself it would be a dismal failure, but she is perfectly right. Every woman in this room will be knocking on her door tomorrow, foolishly hoping to be made to look like you.”

Dana was five foot eleven with a perfect figure, curved and long, with high breasts, athletic legs, and a firm musculature. Her smoky skin usually meant that as an actress she was cast in “ethnic” roles—whether First Nation rebel, exotic outworlder, or Arab princess. Or her current soap role—Reena, the bitchy, repressed, high-flying South Asian lawyer.

“Would you like some bubbly, Dana?” Sir Henry asked, neatly whisking a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and offering it to her. “Not for me, dear boy, my heart, you know,” he added, waving one pale hand with studied elegance. “Do you think you could find me a scotch?—double, no water.”

“Oh, yes, Sir John! Of course!” said the waiter, enthusiastically if inaccurately, and headed for the long bar, behind which men and women in black and white bustled to provide for the guests of the charity function.

“They are so young these days,” Sir Henry complained mildly. “They don’t show my Lear in the schools anymore, of course.”

“I don’t think they teach King Lear at all,” Dana sympathized. “Not accessible enough, Shakespeare.”

A man was staring at her from across the room. The whole room was manoeuvring, overtly or covertly, to get a look at the dress; she had been prepared for that. But this man was different. He looked disapproving. Dana flicked a careless eyebrow at him and turned her attention back to “the best Lear the world has seen this century.”

“Ah, the new barbarians,” he was saying. “And why are you here tonight, my dear, giving a view of your body to the masses? A particular interest in Bagestani Drought Relief, or merely part of the general celebrity sweep? I understand they’ve pulled out all the stops for this one.” He glanced around the crowd with studied disdain. His mouth worked thoughtfully. “Too far, perhaps.”

She laughed, as she was meant to. “A little of both. They did scoop the cast of Brick Lane, but I would probably have been targeted anyway—I’m half Bagestani, Sir Henry.”

She glanced at the disapproving man again: he had a dark intensity that made him magnetic. She was annoyed by the compulsion, but couldn’t resist it. For a moment their eyes met. Then, dismissing her, he dropped his gaze to someone who was speaking to him.

Who the hell did he think he was? Dana looked him over. He was wearing a dark red, matte silk, Eastern-cut jacket over ivory silk shalwar trousers, and some pretty impressive jewellery, as well as what looked like war medals. He also seemed to have a chain of office. Although by his looks he might be a Bagestani, no representative of the Ghasib regime would be at this function.

“Really?” Sir Henry replied, his eyebrows raised. “I was under the impression that you were Ojibwa—was that just studio publicity?”

Dana had played the small part of a First Nation woman brought to England from Canada during the early nineteenth century in a film in which Sir Henry had had the starring role.

“My mother’s Ojibwa, my father Bagestani,” she said shortly. She glanced around the room. People were still nudging each other and talking about her dress, but the dark man was now apparently unaware of her existence. “Usually they play up whatever side suits the publicity machine.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, eyeing her up and down. “Astonishing how beautifully some races mix. Makes one wonder why the great prejudice grew up against interracial marriage. I am sure we—”

“Sir Henry,” Dana said abruptly, “that tall man over there was looking at you. Do you know him?”

He turned his head absently. “If a man was looking this way, my dear, and I am sure they all are, he—oh, good evening, Dickie,” he interrupted himself as an actor of his generation accosted him. “Still kicking, then. Do you know Dana Morningstar?”

On Dana’s other side a woman took advantage of the interruption to approach her and claim her attention.

“I have to confess that I watch Brick Lane regularly! And I think the show is going to be absolutely destroyed without Reena. I love you in that—you are so cool and bitchy, you never let Jonathan get away with it!” she enthused. “Everyone I know was so upset to hear you were being written out!”

Dana smiled with the charm that always made people comment on how different she was from bitchy Reena, and murmured politely.

“No, it’s absolutely true! You make that show!” the woman overrode her, much more interested in her own voice than her idol’s. “Do you know yet how it’s going to happen to Reena? Is it going to be murder or anything like that?”

Dana had done her final day of filming last week, but—“I’m sworn to secrecy, I’m afraid,” she apologized with a smile.

She heard much more in the same vein as the next hour progressed. For an hour the celebrities, major and minor, were rubbing shoulders in the bar with the paying guests, who had parted with substantial sums of money for the privilege, and would be parted from more during the course of the evening.

A magazine photographer’s assistant was working his way through the crowd asking the celebrities, two at a time, to go and pose for shots under the special lighting that had been set up in one corner. A photographer from a newspaper was walking around the room taking candid shots.

Sometimes she thought she felt the man’s gaze brushing her again, but when she glanced over she never caught him looking her way. Maybe she was imagining it. She irritably rejected the idea as soon as she thought of it—he was the last man in the world she would obsess over. She knew what he was like without exchanging one word with him.

She was sure that if she asked anyone about him he would notice, and she was determined not to give him the satisfaction. He was certainly on the “celebrity” side: women were drooling over him with the special fixity reserved for men who are rich, handsome, young and famous all together.

Not that he was all that handsome, Dana told herself critically, watching as he dutifully took his turn posing for the photographer. His face was composed of angles too strong and stern for handsomeness. There was too much strength in the set of his jaw, the discipline of the wide mouth. He had square, thick black eyebrows over black eyes that seemed to set icy fire to whatever they touched. He was slim and spare, his shoulders square under his jacket. There seemed to be a weight of responsibility on him, and she could only guess his age at between twenty-five and forty.

She didn’t like him. She didn’t like him at all.

But it occurred to her that she always knew exactly where he was in the room. Of course it was only because she was the tallest woman in the room and he was at least six-two, but still…

“Ladies and gentlemen, in a moment we’ll be moving into the ballroom,” one of the organizers announced, and she surfaced and realized that she had spent the past five minutes in a daze, with no idea what she had said or what had been said to her. “If you don’t yet know your table, please check the charts by the entrance.”

“Have you found yours yet, Dana?”

Jenny, the actress who played her roommate, Desirée, on the show, was at her elbow.

“Clueless,” Dana replied cheerfully, as they kissed cheeks.

“I’m sure you’ll be at Table G with the rest of us.” The two women linked arms and moved towards the crowd around the chart beside the wide entrance to the ballroom.

“That dress is going to cause a riot, Dana,” Jenny murmured, completely without envy. She was Dana’s opposite in nearly every physical feature—she was a curly-headed blond, with a round, cheerful, motherly face and a short dumpy shape. But she was fun, loyal and a good friend, as well as an excellent actress, and she never seemed to envy anyone anything.

Dana laughed. “Is it shocking?”

“You have no idea, my pet! You turn your head or lift an arm and suddenly you’re naked! I’ve seen more than one spilled drink!”

“Well, that’s the idea,” Dana observed. “It’s supposed to get me noticed.”

“And who is that broody alpha male you’re carefully not exchanging glances with?”

Dana’s cheeks got warm. “Who do you mean?”

Jenny laughed and squeezed her arm. “You know very well who I mean. First he looks at you, then you look at him, and you’re both careful never to be caught at it. Darling, have you had a complicated affair with a handsome sheikh and managed to keep it secret?”

Dana jerked upright. “I don’t even know his name, and I certainly don’t want to learn it! Where did you get the idea I knew him?”

“Oh…just a certain sizzle in the air,” Jenny said, mock dreamily. “The air between you is distorted, sort of like when heat is rising over the desert sands….”

A man with a clipboard stopped them before Dana could argue.

“It’s quite all right, I can check for you, Miss Morningstar!” he said, so obviously smitten that Jenny laughed. He riffled through his pages. “Table D,” he announced. “That’s about five o’clock on the inner circle if you take the dais as twelve.”

This cryptic comment made sense a few moments later when they moved into the ballroom. Against the centre of the back wall was a raised octagonal dais where a Middle Eastern ensemble, including the traditional tar, setar, nay and santur, as well as zither and violin, was tuning up. Around the dais was a polished octagonal dance floor, and around that were arranged tiers of round tables, each seating eight people.

The band began playing as the guests entered and spread out to find their tables—a haunting melody that Dana recognized. It was a traditional Bagestani song called Aina al Warda?—“Where is the Rose?”—which had taken on a special resonance for the expatriate Bagestanis, all so bitterly opposed to Ghasib’s terrible regime. Her father had played it to Dana and her sister throughout her childhood.

“I wonder why you’re not at Table G with the rest of us?” Jenny moaned after accompanying her to Table D and discovering, contrary to both inclination and expectation, that the man with the clipboard was right.

“It’s a bore,” Dana agreed, but there wasn’t going to be a seating change now.

“Who are you with, then?” Jenny bent to the cards on either side of Dana’s own. The band was giving Aina al Warda? all it had, and as people around the room sank into their seats, Dana saw another stern dark man looking her way. He was dressed in the Western style, black tie, and looked as though he was wondering whether to cross over to her.

Her father.

Where is the Rose?

When will I see her?

The nightingale asks after his beloved….

She stared at him. Well, this put a whole new complexion on the fund-raising evening. This was no mere Drought Relief Campaign. Her father would not have come to any ordinary charity fund-raiser for Bagestan. He was convinced that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, most of the money raised in good faith in the West went straight into President Ghasib’s own coffers and the poor scarcely saw a penny.

Dana took a fresh look around at the other guests. They were top bracket; the tickets to this affair had been very pricey. Only about half of them were the usual run of charity supporters and celebrity hunters, though.

The other half were wealthy, educated Bagestani expats—mostly those of a certain age who had been rich enough to get out of the country in sixty-nine, but sprinkled with a few who had come as refugees in the years since and made good. The next generation, the foreign-born sons and daughters like herself, were also well represented.

The women were mostly in traditional Bagestani dress of beautifully decorated shalwar kamees and trailing gold-embroidered scarf, and a number of the older men were in immaculate white djellabas. More than one of them, hearing that music, now had eyes that were brighter for tears.

Her father was still looking at her. She wondered if he had seen her dress. She hoped so. She was suddenly filled with a dry, dead fury, as if her father had somehow manipulated her presence here. Logic told her that was impossible.

“Hellooo,” Jenny carolled.

Dana surfaced, nodded a cool acknowledgement to her father and turned away. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Sir John Cross,” Jenny repeated, pointing to the card at the place setting to one side of Dana’s. “Who’s he?”

“A diplomat, I think. Or, he was.” She had a vague memory of her father’s voice. “Wasn’t he the British Ambassador to Bagestan at the time of the coup?”

“Search me!” Jenny shrugged. “Poor Dana! And Sheikh Ashraf Durran,” she read from the card on her other side. “One of those boring old farts in white skirts, I bet. My poor darling, it’s going to be a long night for you.”

“It is going to be a very successful fund-raising night,” Dana told her with dry sarcasm, unable to hold down her irritation.

“Is it? How do you know?” Jenny asked with a smile. She wasn’t big on world affairs, Dana reminded herself. And her interest in such things as mind manipulation techniques began and ended with using her disarming, housewifely smile in fabric softener commercials.

“Because it may say Drought Relief on the banners, but the real story behind this little event is Line Our Pockets with Gold and One Day We’ll Restore the Monarchy in Bagestan!” she told Jenny through her teeth. “God, these people make me sick!”

Jenny blinked. “What do—”

“Listen to that music! They’re deliberately playing on everyone’s insane hopes for Ghasib to be overthrown and a new sultan to come riding in on his white horse and turn back the clock to the Golden Age! It’s not going to happen, but they will get a fortune from the deluded tonight! It’s unspeakable!”

Jenny was looking at her in surprise. Dana wasn’t often like this, except when she was on the set playing the overexcitable Reena.

“But, Dana, wouldn’t you rather see Ghasib kicked out? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if one of the al Whatsit princes could be found and restored to the throne?”

“You’ve been reading the Sunday papers, Jenny. It’s nothing but ink and hot air. There are no al Jawadi princes! Ghasib had them all assassinated years ago. If anybody kicks Ghasib out, it is going to be the Islamic militants, and that’s just going to be a case of out of the frying pan, isn’t it?”

“But what about that one in Hello! magazine a couple of weeks back, who had amnesia? He was so gorgeous, too. He’s a grandson of the old sultan, and it said—”

“Najib al Makhtoum is not a viable candidate for the throne, even if he is who they say he is, which I doubt. They are all completely deluded, these people, and somebody is making sure they stay deluded.” She belatedly noticed the alarm in Jenny’s eyes, heaved a sigh and smiled.

“Sorry, Jen, but I got this stuff all my life from my father, and I hate it. You’re right, they are a bunch of boring old farts who want their palaces and oil rigs back and can’t accept that it isn’t going to happen. God, I wish I hadn’t come! It might be tolerable if I were sitting with you and the others. This way—” she gestured at the label that read Sheikh Ashraf Durran “—in addition to everything else, I’ll have to listen to a whole lot of demented ravings about how we’ve got Ghasib on the ropes at last.”

“Never mind,” Jenny murmured mock-placatingly, “you can always marry him. He’s probably got lots of money, and that’s what really matters.”

“Not if he were the last sheikh on the planet!” Dana vowed.

Jenny laughed, leaned to kiss Dana’s cheek again and moved off. Dana turned her head—and found herself looking at the harsh-faced stranger from a distance of a few feet. By the look on his face, not only was he an al Jawadi supporter, he had overheard every word of their conversation.

Two

For a moment she thought he was going to pass on by, but he stopped and faced her. His eyes bored into hers, but against a little shiver of feeling she couldn’t define, she managed to hold her gaze steady.

“Are you an optimist, Miss Golbahn, or a pessimist?” he asked in conversational tones.

Typical of a man like him to call her by her father’s, not her professional name. She was quite sure it was deliberately calculated.

“Don’t you mean, am I a dreamer or a realist?”

“No, I don’t mean that,” he replied, in a careful tone that infuriated her. His eyebrows moved expressively. “I mean, when you say that the restoration of the monarchy is impossible, do you speak from your wishes, or your fears?”

He had absolutely no right to challenge her about a conversation he had eavesdropped on in the first place. His arrogance made her grit her teeth—and tell a lie.

“I have no wishes one way or the other. I am simply calling it as I see it.”

“You have no wish to see a vicious dictator who destroys his country and his people swept from power,” he repeated, his face hardening.

She was damned if she would retract now.

“What good would my hopes do anyone?”

His burning gaze flicked down over her body, then back up to her face again. She suddenly felt what a disadvantage it was not to know whether she was naked or not. Had he just looked at her breasts?

“Do you feel you owe nothing to your father, Miss Golbahn?” he asked.

She stared at him in open-mouthed, indignant astonishment. Typical of a man like him to imagine a twenty-six-year-old woman should govern her actions according to her father’s pride!

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she demanded, dimly realizing that heads were now turning in their direction.

“I—”

“My name is Morningstar,” she overrode him in her coldest voice. “And how accounts stand between me and my father is absolutely none of your business.”

His eyes narrowed at her, but if he expected her to be cowed, he could think again. She tilted her chin and gave him stare for stare. Her tone was no more insulting than his own had been, and she would be quite happy to point that out to him. But the man bowed his head a fraction.

“I apologize. I was given to understand that you were Colonel Golbahn’s daughter.”

“My father is Khaldun Golbahn. He is no longer a colonel, and the regiment he was colonel of hasn’t existed for over thirty years,” she returned through her teeth.

Before he could respond to this, a waiter appeared to pull out her chair, and Dana gratefully turned away and sank down to accept a napkin on her lap. Only a few people were still milling around, tying up their conversations before heading to separate tables. People were watching her more or less covertly, and she realized that her argument with the stranger had given them another reason to stare and whisper.

She could sense that he was still hovering behind her. She hoped he wasn’t intending to get in the last word. Dana picked up the printed menu card propped in front of her wineglass and wished he would disappear.

“Sheikh Durran!” a crusty old voice exclaimed with satisfaction.

“Sir John,” his voice replied, and she almost fainted with horror. Her eyes flew to the place card at the setting next to her. Sheikh Ashraf Durran.

Ya Allah, she would be sitting beside him for the next two hours!

The two men were shaking hands behind her, and she heard the clap of hand against shoulder. “I was hoping to see you.” The old man dropped his voice. “How did your brother manage? Can I assume your presence tonight means I am to congratulate you?”

Dana found she was holding her breath. There was an air of mystery over the conversation, suddenly, and it gripped her. She bent further over the menu card, but she wasn’t taking in one word of what was printed.

“He was successful, Sir John, in a manner of speaking—and flying by the seat of his pants, as usual.”

He spoke quietly. His voice now held a hint of humour that she hadn’t been privileged to hear when he spoke to her. It was deep and strong, as compelling as the man. A voice an actor would kill for.

“You have it safe, then?” The old man was whispering now.

“I do.”

“Tremendous! Well done, all of you! One might almost say, an omen.”

“Mash’Allah.”

The two men sat, one on either side of her. Dana stared fixedly at the menu. She had never felt so unnerved by a situation. She reminded herself how many times in the past she had made conversation with awkward, difficult strangers, more or less successfully. There was no reason to feel as though there was a chasm in front of her.

Waiters were already circulating with trays of starters and pouring wine. Onstage the tar was being played with a heartrending virtuosity that no other instrument, she thought, ever achieved.

“Asparagus or tabbouleh?” the waiter asked her.

Dana loved the food of Bagestan; she had been raised on it. At sixteen she had stopped eating it, as a rejection of her father and all he stood for. That time of rebellion was long past; she was twenty-six now. But she found herself thrown back into that old, combative mind-set now.

She wanted to let Sheikh Ashraf Durran know that she was not to be judged by any of his rules. As she had her father.

“Asparagus, thank you,” she said, and a plate of butter-soaked green spears was set before her. She took a sip of wine.

“Tabbouleh,” Sheikh Durran firmly requested a moment later. She noticed that there was no wine in his wineglass. Well, she could have guessed that.

In the loud buzz of conversation that was going up all around the ballroom, it seemed to her that the silence between the two of them must be as obvious to everyone as their earlier disagreement. She wondered if gossip about them would find its way into the tabloids. Journalists often needed no more. Find a button and sew a coat onto it was their motto.

Dana glanced around the table in the hopes of finding a conversation to join. Somehow she had got put in with the political crowd. She recognized an academic who was often called in to discuss Bagestani affairs on a BBC current events program, and a television journalist who had made her name covering the Parvan-Kaljuk War and whose career was now devoted to reporting from one Middle East hot spot or another. Dana thought she would have enjoyed talking to them. But they were directly across the table from her, chatting quietly together.

Sir John Cross, too, was engaged with the person on his other side.

“You have no desire to see your father restored to his command, Miss Morningstar?” Sheikh Durran clearly had no reservations about picking up where they had left off.

Dana picked up a stalk of asparagus and turned her head. Up close she recognized the Parvan flag on one of his medals. He was a veteran of the Parvan-Kaljuk War, then, but she was no closer to knowing who he was.

“I have no expectation of seeing it,” she returned, before biting into the tender, delicious tip.

“Why not?”

“My father is, after all, nearly sixty. Not very much younger than President Ghasib.” She said the name deliberately, for in expat circles it wasn’t the thing to give the dictator his title. Saying it on an occasion like this was tantamount to declaring herself on the Ghasib side.

She wasn’t on the Ghasib side and never had been, not even in her days of wildest rebellion. But no way was she going to fall meekly in line with the sheikh’s expectations.

She pushed the buttery stalk into her mouth. There was no change in the sheikh’s expression, but suddenly she felt the phallic symbolism of it, almost as if he had pointed it out to her. Dream on! she wanted to snap. She chewed, then licked the butter from her fingertips before deliberately reaching for her wine again.

Sheikh Durran seemed to take no notice. He picked up a small lettuce leaf and used it to pinch up some of his tabbouleh salad.

“Do you think the only thing that will remove Ghasib from power is death from old age?”

She chose another stalk. She opened her mouth, wondering if she could unnerve him by sucking the butter from the tip. Her eyes flicked to his. His look was dry and challenging, and without any warning, heat flamed in her cheeks.

“Even granting the unlikely proposition that there was an al Jawadi heir,” she said defiantly, “even granting that this mysterious person should at last reveal himself and, even more amazingly, make the risky attempt to take power, and then granting that he should be successful in restoring the monarchy in Bagestan—what are the odds that my father would be given his old job back by someone who wasn’t even born at the time he held it?”

His eyebrows went up, but he made no answer.

“But the truth, if people would stop being excited by newspaper reports as reliable as sightings of the Abominable Snowman, is that it’s a mirage. No prince is going to come riding in on his white horse and wave his magic wand to make Ghasib disappear.”

“You know this?”

“Look—I got that nostalgia stuff at my daddy’s knee. He talked of nothing else all through my childhood. When I was a kid, I believed it. I had a huge crush on the mysterious Crown Prince who was going to make it all happen. I wrote letters to him. I even had a dream that I was going to marry him when I grew up. But he never came, did he? Thirty years now.

“I paid my dues, Sheikh Durran. I believed the myth as firmly as I believed in Santa Claus. After my mother and father split Santa Claus never visited our house again, but I went on believing in him. And I went on believing in the al Jawadi restoration, too. But a dream like that only lasts so long. And then one day you wake up and realize—it’s a fairy tale.”

“And at what age did you wake up?”

Dana tensed and wished she hadn’t spoken so openly. She wasn’t sure why she had. “From the Santa Claus myth, eight. From the prince on a white horse fiction, sixteen,” she said shortly, and applied herself to her meal.

“Sixteen,” Sheikh Ashraf repeated consideringly. “That’s young to stop believing in justice.”

She supposed he was right. But she had had a very rude and sudden awakening.

Dana shrugged, demolished another spear of asparagus, and wiped her fingers on her napkin. He waited, and she felt forced to answer. She waved a hand at the room.

“What amazes me is the number of people who never wake up—who refuse to wake up.”

“What happened at sixteen that took the stars from your eyes?”

I discovered that the father I adored was a monster and nothing he said was to be believed.

She shrugged and lied again. “Nothing in particular.”

His gaze probed her for an uncomfortable moment, but to her relief he let it pass.

“And what happened to your letters?” he asked.

“What?” she asked blankly. She automatically leaned towards him as the waiter cleared her plate.

“The letters you wrote to the Crown Prince. What became of them?”

She really wished she hadn’t told him about that. It wasn’t a part of her past she confided very often. Something had knocked her off her centre tonight.

“I really don’t know.” Her tone said, don’t care.

“They were never sent?”

“Where to? My father told me Crown Prince Kamil had escaped from the palace as a baby, with his mother carrying him in a load of Ghasib’s dirty laundry. He said they got to Parvan, but no one knew any more than that, did they?”

He hesitated. “Some knew more.”

She wasn’t sure what made her ask, “Did you ever meet him?”

Again he hesitated. “Yes, I met him.”

“He died fighting in the Kaljuk War, didn’t he? Is that where you knew him?”

Sheikh Ashraf turned his head and lifted a hand as the waiter started to fill his glass with wine. “No, thank you.”

When he turned back he seemed to have forgotten her question. After a moment Dana nodded towards the row of medals on his chest.

“You were in the Kaljuk War?”

His eyelids came down as he nodded.

“Are you Parvani?” He didn’t sound it.

“I was born in Barakat,” he said. “I was in Prince Omar’s Company.”

The almost legendary Company of Cup Companions, led by Prince Omar of Central Barakat, who had gone to war on Prince Kavian’s side. She had followed their fortunes while still at drama school. All her friends had had crushes on the Cup Companions and had plagued Dana with questions, feeling sure that, because of her background, she knew more than they did.

And she had, a little. At least she knew what the term Cup Companion meant. “In the old days, it used to mean the guys the king went on the prowl with. The sons of the aristocracy. They weren’t supposed to know or care about politics or government, only wine and love and poetry.” Cue for sighs. “But nowadays it’s just the opposite. They’re the prince’s special advisors and stuff like that. By tradition he has twelve of them,” she had explained.

There had been many more than the twelve in the Company, of course. Others recruited had been made Honorary Companions. So it wasn’t foolish to ask, “Are you one of his Cup Companions?”

He replied with a little nod. She should have guessed before. But she’d forgotten until now that Cup Companions from Parvan and the Barakat Emirates were supposed to be attending tonight.

“What’s your interest in the al Jawadis?” she pressed.

He eyed her consideringly for a moment. “Prince Omar is related to the al Jawadi through the Durrani. I, too, am a Durrani.”

“And you want to help the al Jawadi back to the throne?”

His raised his eyebrows. “Tonight we are here to raise money not for the al Jawadi, but for the victims of the drought which Ghasib’s insane agricultural policies have created.”

“Maybe, on the surface, but you know and I know that tonight there are going to be lots of under-the-table donations to the al Jawadi campaign as well.”

“Do we?”

The waiter had refilled her wineglass and she took another sip. There was juice on the table for non-drinkers, but she noticed Sheikh Durran stuck to water. But refusing alcohol didn’t prove he was a good man. No doubt her father was doing the same.

“Born in Barakat, you said. Are you Bagestani by blood?” Not all the refugees from Ghasib’s regime had fled to England or Canada, by any means. More had gone to Parvan and Barakat.

“I am half Barakati, half Bagestani,” he said, after a pause in which he seemed to calculate.

“Ah! So you’re one of those who never stopped believing in the fairy tale?”

His lips twitched again. “You might say that. And you, Miss Morningstar—you do not believe anyone is capable of removing Ghasib from power?”

“Salmon or chicken?” the waiter interrupted, and quickly set down what she asked for.

She chose automatically and scarcely noticed the interruption.

“Well, there’s always the possibility that another ambitious nephew may one day be successful in some renewed assassination attempt, I suppose,” she allowed, helping herself to the beautifully cooked vegetables offered. “Or the Islamic militants may pull it off. But Ghasib does seem to deal with both those possibilities in a very convincing way, doesn’t he? I can’t help feeling that anyone with their eyes on power, even a prince, if there is one, might be content to wait until natural causes win the day for them.”

He concentrated on the vegetables for a moment. “You think the fear of death makes cowards of us all?”

His part of the conversation so far seemed to consist entirely of questions. “Maybe. It’s the undiscovered country, isn’t it? ‘Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,’” she recited.

His mouth went up on one side. It was the first smile she had had from him. “And who said that?”

“Hamlet. Isn’t that who you were paraphrasing?”

This produced a small laugh. Humour transformed him, she found. The fire in his eyes turned to sparkle, and he suddenly seemed much younger. Now she would place him at well under thirty-five.

“I was not paraphrasing anyone.” The flow to the new conversation was seamless as he pursued, “You know the play well?”

“I starred in a school production.”

“Interesting—I thought the star part was Hamlet himself.”

“It is the star part.” She grinned, but still did not feel easy with him. “I was at a girls’ school.”

“And you were the tallest girl?”

It occurred to her suddenly that he did not know who she was. That was why he had called her by her father’s name. Well, no surprise if a man like him didn’t watch the soaps, and she hadn’t yet landed a major film part.

She laughed. What did it matter? “Yes, I was the tallest girl by a long way,” she said. “I was a natural for the part.”

Three

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.”

Dana and Sheikh Ashraf had chatted more amiably for a few minutes, and then, mercifully, the conversation had opened up and become general around the table. Now the meal, delicious by any standards and stupendous compared to the food served at most other charity functions she had attended, was finished. Coffee and liqueurs had been served.

Now it was down to business.

“We have a wonderful evening lined up for you tonight….”

Dana absently sipped her Turkish coffee and let the voice of the master of ceremonies wash over her. The organizer was introduced, an earnest, small man talking about the drought and the famine it had caused. And, knowing his audience, making much of President Ghasib’s deliberate mismanagement of Bagestan’s agriculture and his habit of pocketing charity funds.

“But we have negotiated with Ghasib’s government to put our own representatives on the ground in Bagestan, and management of the funds raised tonight will never leave our control until it is safe in the hands of those who need it most….”

“I wonder if that’s true,” Dana murmured.

“Very difficult to manage, I should have thought,” Sir John Cross agreed in a low voice. “However, what else can one do? I think we must assume that some of the money gets through to those who actually need it.”

“And while we may hope and believe that we’re getting closer by the day to the moment when Ghasib’s government will be history, our priority toni—”

The audience interrupted him with applause. Dana shook her head and glanced towards Sheikh Ashraf. He was looking very sober, leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed. He was not applauding.

He turned his head and caught her eye with a dark, level gaze that seemed to probe and assess, and made her heart pound, but what he had gleaned from the examination, she couldn’t guess.

The organizer wisely kept it short and then the real star of the evening took the mike. Roddy Evans was a well-known and popular comedian, always in demand for events like this because of his ability to put people into a generous, good-natured mood and then get bundles of money out of them. Dana had always liked him.

“All right, I want every table to elect a captain, please!” he said, when his warm-up had reduced everyone to cheers, laughter and applause. “Just choose one person who’ll keep the rest of you in line this evening and take money from your wallets when instructed to do so….”

“I think it better be Dana!” someone announced. “If it comes to delivering money to the stage, she’s the one they’ll all want to see,” and the rest of the table quickly agreed.

“Sheikh Durran looks like a much better bet,” Dana protested, more out of curiosity to see how he would react than anything else. “He’s at least big enough to make any threat stick.”

“But one catches more flies with honey,” he said smoothly, waving a hand, and they all laughed and agreed.

Dana gave in with a threat.

“You’ll be sorry. Be afraid, be very afraid. I will soak you.”

Being captain turned out to be a not very onerous duty. At intervals throughout the evening, on instruction, Dana had to get a five-or ten-pound note from each of the people seated at her table and pass the money on to one of the roving hostesses. Most people were familiar with the format and had come with a supply of folding money as well as their chequebooks. In the meantime there was plenty of nonsense to keep people laughing and donating.

After a while came what most of the paying guests considered the high point—the auction. Tonight there were some real prizes. Top of the list was an all-expense-paid first-class two-week holiday at the Hotel Sheikh Daud in West Barakat, sponsored by Prince Karim.

But that would come near the end, as would the brand-new Subaru donated by Ahmed Bashir Motors. Before that there was some very exciting and somewhat drink-inspired bidding for weekends at country hotels, meals in restaurants, books, celebrity memorabilia, theatre tickets—whatever the organizers had been able to screw out of donors. The organizers here had clearly been top rank, and there was a stream of the kind of prizes that were often the top prize at lesser events.

Sprinkled among them were half a dozen “personal appearance” donations. Certain celebrities had agreed to spend an evening at a restaurant with whoever bid the highest for the honour. In the ruthless way of the entertainment industry, these prizes, like the others, were graded according to ascending value through the evening, because of the excitement the increasing amounts of money generated from the guests.

It was always interesting, and often salutary for those concerned, to see which celebrities were expected to bring in only a low bid, and which were saved to the end—with the other best prizes. The celebrities usually hated the whole process.

Most of such celebrities were women, and tonight all were, which Dana supposed was a comment on the way society was still run. She was always asked to participate in such an auction, and sometimes did, though always disliking it. If a man got you for too little, he treated you with contempt. If he paid a lot, often he thought he should be able to expect a little more than your face over the dinner table. Or, worst of all, he invited a whole horde of his friends along and expected you to act as his hostess for the evening.

But good charity organizers were ruthless, and this one had been prime, and Dana had given in.

Her name hadn’t been called yet. This was making her nervous, because although the early names didn’t usually get up in front of the crowd during the auction, the later names were often asked to do so. This let you in for even more potential humiliation if your drawing power wasn’t as strong as the organizers had assumed.

Jenny’s name had come up early. She stayed in her seat, but she had got a very respectable two thousand pounds from a real estate agent whose company name was called out at least eight times during the prolonged bidding by the savvy Roddy. Dana had expected to be the next celebrity auctioned after an interval of theatre tickets and a year’s membership to a top gym, but she wasn’t.

Nor was she the next, nor the next.

She began to feel really uncomfortable. She was not a movie star, after all; they were the ones who pulled in the really big sums. She was a mere soap star with only a couple of film credits, and if she went up after high bids and scored much less than the previous celeb, it would be embarrassing.

Next up was a gorgeous, big-breasted but brain-dead television presenter, who was called up onstage for the auction and who, after a long and well-hyped bidding war between a Harley Street cosmetic surgeon and a new car dealer, pulled nearly five thousand pounds. It was a figure which impressed the whole room.

A set of golf clubs came next, but it was clear all the real emotional heat this time had become focussed on the human portion of the auction. A very well-known middle-aged movie actress who had been included in last year’s Honours List and was now a Dame raised just over six thousand pounds. Dana started to feel very uncomfortable. Why had this woman been listed before her? It was ridiculous. Dana didn’t have anything like her pulling power.

Maybe Dana’s name had just been forgotten by the organizer. She certainly hoped so.

“It’s a bit like a slave auction,” the journalist across the table observed dispassionately, making Dana cringe even more. “I wonder why they do it?”

“Because we are made to feel, by whoever is pressuring us, that it is a small thing to ask and everyone else has agreed and we are selfish and smug if we refuse,” Dana said clearly.

And just then Roddy cried, “…a dinner date at the fabulous Riverfront Restaurant with our very own favourite bitch, Reena! Otherwise known as Brick Lane star Dana Morningstar! And she’s here tonight, ladies and gentlemen, so will you come up here, Reena, I mean, Dana, and let the folks take a look at the merchandise?”

Dana lifted her eyebrows at the journalist as one of the ever-present assistants dashed in to hold her chair and escort her to the stage amid an enthusiastic round of applause and cheers.

She smiled and twinkled her fingers as she stepped up under the lights, and wondered whether her dress was opaque or transparent at the moment.

“…and together you’ll dine on caviar, lobster and champagne provided by the fabulous Riverfront Restaurant, which as you all know is one of London’s most fabulous eateries! It’s moored right on the Thames, and you’ll be driven home afterwards in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce provided by Launcelot Limos!

“So now, what am I bid for a delightful evening in Dana Morningstar’s company? You might even learn from her the secret of Reena’s demise before it’s broadcast! Do I hear five hundred, ladies and gentlemen?”

“Five hundred!”

“Oooh, quick off the mark there, Harold. That’s Harold McIntosh, ladies and gentlemen, not short of a bob or two when you run a Mayfair car dealership, now, are you? Five hundred, do I hear—”

“One thousand!”

“Ah, ha! Well, this promises to be a very exciting auction, ladies and gentlemen, not reticent at all, are we? That’s a thousand bid from—”

“Ten thousand pounds.”

It wasn’t a shout, but somehow the voice cut through the chatter and was heard by everyone. There was a collective gasp all over the room. Not only because of the enormous leap in the bidding, but because of the quality of the voice. Firm, assured, brooking no interference. And not at all the worse for drink.

Sheikh Ashraf Durrani’s voice.

Dana felt her cheeks flame. She bit her lip. She had never had to work so hard to force a smile in her life, but she managed it. She even managed to fake a little wide-eyed, excited grimace.

“Ten thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen! Well, now we’re getting serious. And who is going to take that higher, I wonder? Jeremy, accountant to the stars, you’re in this league, do I hear a raise on ten thousand for an evening with Dana Gorgeous Morningstar? What about you, George—”

“Ten thousand one hundred!” cried a slightly inebriated voice.

“Ah ha! We’re really cooking with—”

“Fifteen thousand pounds.”

It was the sheikh again, speaking as flatly as if he were giving an underling an order. The skin on Dana’s body shivered into goose bumps. He was making it so obvious.

“Well, well, Sheikh Durran! I see you’re pretty determined to get what you want. Do I hear any bids over fifteen thousand?” cried Roddy, just a little nonplussed, because it suddenly was difficult to inject the humour and good-natured ribaldry he was such at expert at into the proceedings. The room was filled with an excited buzz. Dana, standing in a bright spot, just kept smiling.

It was a struggle. What on earth did the man think he was doing? To be the highest bidder was one thing. To carry on like this meant everyone would be talking! They’d be the subject of endless speculation, and the story would probably make it into the tabloids. They’d never get any peace if they appeared in public.

And yet part of her couldn’t resist the lure of being thought so attractive. Fifteen thousand pounds in a couple of minutes! And such a powerful, influential man! It was like a fairy tale.

She saw Jenny and the others at the Brick Lane table gazing at her in blank, slightly reproachful astonishment, as if a secret part of her life had been revealed and they felt they should have known about it.

“…and gone! To Sheikh Ashraf Durran. I’m told you’re one of Prince Omar of Central Barakat’s most trusted advisors, Sheikh Durran, and I’m sure he’ll agree you’ve shown excellent judgement tonight!”

The applause was thunderous as Dana was escorted back to her seat, a follow spot on her all the way.

“Whew!” exclaimed Roddy, wiping the not-so-imaginary sweat from his brow. “Ladies and gentlemen, what can we do to beat that? You’ll have to work hard and bid high! And that won’t be too difficult for our next prize—Prince Karim of West Barakat himself has actually donated this one, ladies and gentlemen. It’s the one you’ve all been waiting for—well, except for a certain fairly obvious exception, who’s already snaffled his prize! Here it is, a two-week holiday for two in the fabulous…”

“What on earth did you do that for?” Dana hissed, as she sank into her chair. Everyone at the table was gazing at them in slightly stunned speculation. They must now believe one of two things—that Dana and the handsome sheikh already had a relationship, or that the sheikh was smitten and they were about to have one.

Nothing she could say was going to convince anyone otherwise, she was sure, but the moment she looked into his eyes she realized that it wasn’t true. Whatever his reasons were, she knew damned well that Sheikh Ashraf Durran was anything but smitten with her. The expression in his eyes was anything but sexual interest.

A little seed of anger was born then.

He shrugged, and his next words confirmed her suspicions. “Why not? That is what we are here for, to raise money.”

Inarguable. “Well, after a display like that, I will not go out with you!” she retorted childishly, in a low voice meant for his ears alone. “We’d have every paparazzo in the city following us!”

He lifted his hands in a gesture that said it mattered not a jot whether she did or did not. “Things are rarely what they promise to be. Buyer Beware I am sure is the first rule at such auctions.”

She could not get lighthearted about it. “You have not bought me.”

He looked at her. “No? But you were for sale, were you not? Or should we say for rent?”

That made her grit her teeth. “I’ll speak to the organizer, and you won’t have to—”

He lifted a hand, cutting her off. “Don’t trouble, Miss Morningstar. I will not in any case be in the country beyond tomorrow. Take a friend and enjoy the lobster and the limousine without me.”

This made her even angrier, though she could dimly see that it shouldn’t. She should have smiled graciously and said how generous he was and how the starving children in the Qermez Desert at least would benefit and that was what mattered. But she couldn’t get the words past her teeth.

Maybe because she was gritting them.

“More coffee, Miss Morningstar?”

She was grateful for the excuse to turn her head. She nodded, and the waiter poured more sweet black sludge into her little cup. There was a plate of sugary Turkish delight which she had previously avoided, but now her irritation drove her to pick up a little cube. She bit it irritably in half. It was an unreal bright pink.

Meanwhile the holiday in Barakat was going for at least as much as it was probably worth.

She really couldn’t have said why she was so irritated with him. To throw fifteen thousand pounds away like that—well, of course at first she had imagined it was because he was interested. And of course that had piqued her own interest. But why should she care if all he was interested in was making a show of his wealth while passing on money to charity?

The auction was over, but the wine was still flowing and there were more high jinks in store. People joined in with delight.

Not Dana. And not the stone-cold-sober Sheikh Ashraf. They stood up and sat down as instructed, and put their hands on their heads or their bums, and paraded around. But she noticed that when he turned out to be one of the group of men instructed to drop their trousers to their ankles and shuffle up onto the dance floor, he did not comply, and no one at the table even thought of challenging him on his dereliction.

But everybody else was having a marvellous time with all the nonsense, and the money was rolling in.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, a little earlier in the evening, you were all handed out cards asking how much you would donate to Bagestan Drought Relief for the fun of a kiss. Yes? You were given the names of our six magic couples tonight—the men who bid for an evening with our lovely actress volunteers—and you voted for the couple you would most like to see kiss.”

Dana felt a prickling of her skin, like a warning of doom. She flicked a glance at Sheikh Durran, and saw his mouth tighten. He knew, too. And was looking forward to it as much as she was.

“Now, while we’ve all been having such a fabulous good time, volunteers have been adding up all the votes and tallying them.”

She had agreed to it—of course they wouldn’t pull a thing like this without getting all the actresses’ permission first. But she had agreed with a shrug, thinking it would be just one more thing. A one-in-six chance of having to kiss some smitten stranger in public—how bad could it be? No worse than the auction itself.

But it was going to be a whole lot worse.

“And ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of shattering some delicate egos, I can tell you, it was no contest. The pair you most want to see giving each other a kiss, ladies and gentlemen, is Dana Morningstar and Sheikh Ashraf Durran!”

The bright light of the follow spot fell on them. Sheikh Ashraf was sitting like a statue. Dana realized suddenly that he of course had not been consulted. For the sheikh this was coming totally out of left field.

And he liked it even less than she did. She knew that by his face. Sheikh Ashraf Durran looked like nothing so much as the masks of Hawk her Ojibwa grandfather carved.

But this was a pressure even the coldly disapproving sheikh would not be able to resist.

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