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When pigs fly, she’d have told him, but the women had started trying to strip off her jacket and while she was fending them off, Qasim shut the doors and left her.
Now it was what she’d come to think of as Day Three of her Incarceration. She’d come all this distance to do her job, but she hadn’t done a damned thing except pace her rooms and the garden outside.
And she’d had enough.
Megan shot to her feet, went out to the garden, opened the gate and marched down to the sea. The women rushed after her, crying out in distress. Apparently she wasn’t supposed to leave her cage.
She ignored them.
At least she could breathe down here. Why had she tolerated such treatment? To come all this way only to be treated like a prisoner?
A sea bird called out overhead, but its cry offered no answers.
The situation was intolerable.
“Intolerable,” Megan snapped.
She turned on her heel and retraced her steps back to the garden, to her rooms, to the double doors that she yanked open so she could march past the astonished guards while her women danced around her wringing their hands and wailing…
And stopped dead when she saw, just ahead, the Great Hall she remembered from the night of their arrival.
The Great Hall, and Qasim.
Qasim, and a woman.
A beautiful woman, even at a distance, petite and delicate with midnight-black hair that fell to her waist. Her gown was pale peach, so delicate it might have been spun from sunlight. She stood close to Qasim, bodies almost touching, her hands on his shoulders, her face turned up to his.
He’s going to kiss her, Megan thought.
For the first time in her life, she understood what people meant when they said anguish could feel like a knife wound to the heart.
She must have made a sound because Qasim turned and saw her. She waited, unmoving. He would say something. Do something. Acknowledge her presence, come to her and explain that what she saw—what she thought she saw—was nothing.
Instead, he turned back to the woman, brought her hands to his mouth, put his arm around her waist and led her up a wide staircase. Led her to his bed. Where else would a man take a woman who looked at him with stars in her eyes?
Megan’s servants surrounded her, scolding and tut-tutting and tugging at her hands. She let them lead her back to her rooms but when the doors closed behind her, she tore free of them, cursing Qasim and her own stupidity for being upset over something that should never have upset her, ranting in words that probably would have surprised her brothers.
The women watched her, wide-eyed, whispering among themselves and keeping their distance which, for some stupid reason, only increased her fury. Finally she snatched up a small porcelain vase and hurled it at the wall.
That got her audience moving.
“La, la,” one said while another wagged her finger. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that meant “no,” but “no” wasn’t going to work.
Qasim had ignored her here for three endless days, all so he could play games with another woman.
Enough. She’d come here to do a job. If she wasn’t going to do it, she was going to go home.
Megan stormed to the doors and yanked them open. The guards looked at her as if she were the last person on earth they ever wanted to see again.
“I want to see the king. Damn it, don’t look at me as if you’re both deaf. Surely one of you understands what I’m saying. I want to see your precious sheikh. Qasim. Do you hear me? You are to take me to—”
“Good afternoon, Miss O’Connell.”
The guards snapped to attention, then parted to reveal Hakim. Her serving women gasped and fell to the floor around her, doubled over like plump, silk-swathed hassocks.
“Stand up,” Megan snapped, “you shouldn’t kneel to any man!”
The women didn’t move. They had no idea what she was saying but Hakim did. His eyes were cold as he clapped his hands and barked out a command that sent the women scuttling away.
