Nan Ryan (37 page)

“Yes, sweetheart,” he said, pushing the gold turban from his face and falling to his knees before her.

Temple anxiously swept back her veil. “How did you know? How did you find me here?”

“I heard your call, Temple.”

“Call?” She gazed at him, disbelieving, her fingers lifting to touch the dear, dark face.

The Sheik put his hand to his heart. “In here.”

“Oh, Sharif,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “I did call for you, I did. I’m so sorry I—”

“It is I who am sorry. For everything.”

“Sharif, you must go! You must leave me. Hurry, before they find you here.” She laid a hand on his chest, felt his heart beating steadily beneath her fingertips. “He will kill you, he will—”

“Shhh,
chérie,”
he said, rising to his feet and bringing her up with him. “I am not leaving you. I have come for you. I am taking you out of here.”

“That’s impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s no way—”

“You must trust me, Temple,” he interrupted. “Will you?”

“Yes, oh yes.”

“I got into the palace and I will get us out.”

Nodding, believing in him, certain he was capable of anything, she said anxiously, “Sharif, my friends … the two women who are to be my wedding attendants … they’ve suffered so.…”

He smiled at her. “Samira and Leyla await just outside the door. They will come with us.” The Sheik touched her face tenderly then and said, “To get out of the palace alive we must also take the happy groom.”

“Take the sultan?”

“Listen to me carefully, Temple.…” His voice was low, commanding. “I’ve only a few short minutes to explain exactly how this is to be done.”

Guests and gifts continued to arrive in a steady stream.

A large, heavy golden chest appeared shortly before noon. It was whispered to be a gift from the wealthy bey of Algiers. Curiosity and speculation passed through the crowd when a uniformed palace guard, a big one-eyed giant of a man, carried the heavy chest atop his wide shoulder across the white-carpeted rooftop.

The sultan, more curious than anyone, motioned the guard forward. Mustafa ordered the strong-backed guard to place the heavy golden chest directly beside the matching silver chairs. The gigantic guard obeyed, then stepped back, stood there unobtrusively behind the chest, his hands folded behind his back. Envisioning stacks of shiny gold bars or hundreds of gold coins inside, the white-robed Mustafa leaned over and laid a fat hand on the chest’s gold latch.

Just then his bride appeared on the sunny rooftop. A buzz of twittering excitement hummed through the wedding crowd, attracting Mustafa’s attention. He looked up and immediately forgot about the golden chest and its contents. His beady eyes gleaming, his loose lips stretched into a wide smile of pleasure, he turned about, sat down heavily on the silver chair, and clasped his hands over his big satin-draped belly.

He watched, entranced, as the beautiful pale-haired woman he was about to wed swept gracefully down the long white aisle behind the two pretty slaves she had insisted attend her at the ceremony.

Mustafa looked past the veiled Leyla and Samira to the tall, exquisite creature garbed in white satin and dripping diamonds. His mouth gaped, and a string of saliva slipped down his chins onto his white satin robes. He felt his small penis stiffen and press against his big, overhanging belly. He could hardly wait to get this beautiful blond goddess into his bedchamber and avail himself of her many charms.

Mustafa wiped his mouth on his egret-feathered sleeve and exhaled with triumph.

The lusty coupling would be made all the sweeter knowing that the fair-skinned foreigner had been stolen from that hated arrogant Arab swine, Sheik Sharif Aziz Hamid.

* * * 

Temple’s knees trembled as she walked the last few steps toward the Turkish sultan. She glanced at the tall uniformed guard standing directly behind the gold chest. Temple recognized Sarhan, the one-eyed giant she had once hired as her desert guide. The Arab who had delivered her to the Sheik. She’d never dreamed that the day would come when she would be glad to see him.

The procession reached the seated sultan. Leyla and Samira moved around behind the empty silver chair. The sultan struggled to his feet and put out his hand to Temple. She took it, squeezed his fat fingers, smiled flirtatiously at him through the white transparent veil, and puckered her lips in invitation to be kissed.

Instantly beside himself with excitement and forgetting entirely the thronged assembly watching, Mustafa grabbed her satin-clad shoulders to draw her face down to his. A split second before his wet gaping mouth could clamp over hers through the veil, the lid of the gold chest flew open, a green-and-gold-uniformed guard leapt out and laid the sharp blade of a jewel-hilted scimitar to the sultan’s fleshy throat.

It happened so fast, the sultan’s many guards and soldiers had no time to respond. A few seconds of stunned silence, then screams and gasps went up from the startled crowd and guns were raised and cocked by the palace guards.

But into Mustafa’s ear, the Sheik, speaking perfect Turkish, coolly warned, “If you want to live, tell them to put away their weapons.”

Terrified, Mustafa shouted for his guards not to shoot, to lay down their weapons. While guests gawked in openmouthed horror, Sharif, with the sharp blade pressed again the Turk’s throat and a loaded Mauser in his other hand, dragged the terrified sultan down the white silk aisle. Sarhan, a large-caliber pistol in each hand, put the three women between himself and the Sheik and backed his way down the aisle.

A foolhardy palace guard who hadn’t listened to his master’s order took a shot at Sharif. The bullet whizzed past Sharif’s ear and Mustafa screamed in terror, expecting to feel the slice of the blade on his throat. Sharif instantly fired on the guard, whose gun still smoked, killing him where he stood.

“That was for my mother!” the Sheik shouted to be heard above the nervous din. “The next will be for my father.”

“Do not raise your weapons!” screamed the choking, struggling sultan. “Lay your arms down. Now!”

There was nothing the emir’s horrified men could do. Dropping their weapons, they stood by helplessly while he was taken off the crowded rooftop, down through the palace, across the gardens, and finally out the sea gates.

There, from where they’d been hiding in the shrubbery, two more of the Sheik’s men emerged. One lifted Temple into his arms, the other Samira, and both immediately began descending the rocky cliffs to the water’s edge, where a high-powered motor launch was concealed in a camouflaged cay.

“Please,” cried the sultan, stumbling on the rocks, “you are out the gates and safe now. Let me go. Release me!”

The Sheik spun him about so he could look him in the face. His eyes as cold as black ice, he said, “No, I will not let you go. I should have killed you years ago.”

“Mercy,” begged Mustafa. “Please … show a little mercy.”

“The only mercy I will show is to kill you quickly,” said the Sheik. “If I had the time, I would torture you slowly to death and allow all those who have suffered at your hands to watch.”

“Money,” blubbered the sultan, “I’ll give you all my money and my—”

“Shut up! You dare to touch the woman I love …” The Sheik’s hand tightened on the sultan’s slippery white satin robe. “The price for that is death.”

His dark face a mask of hatred, Sharif raised the scimitar. Weeping, wetting himself now, Mustafa turned his head away.

“Look at me, you cowardly bastard,” ordered the Sheik. “Let my face be the last thing you see this side of eternal damnation.”

His teeth bared like an animal’s, the Sheik began to lower his arm. A sniper’s bullet, fired from one of the silk-draped parapets high above, struck him in the back before he could plunge the blade into the sultan’s heart. The scimitar slipped from Sharif’s hand as his eyes closed and he crumpled to his knees.

Temple heard the shot, looked up, and saw Sharif falling. She screamed, struggled to free herself from the strong arms holding her, but was carried on down the cliffs by the loyal warrior, who had been given his orders by the Sheik and was determined to carry them out.

Sarhan was halfway down the cliffs when he heard the shot. He stopped in midstride, lowered Leyla to her feet, and, after ordering her to go on down, turned and went back for his fallen leader. Leyla, disobeying, followed Sarhan.

Sarhan reached his wounded master and swung Sharif easily into his massive arms. The nimble Leyla scooped up the jewel-hilted scimitar and went after the fat Turkish ruler. She pounced on Mustafa as he scrambled with surprising agility over the rocks in a desperate attempt to flee.

Shouting for Leyla to get back to the motor launch, Sarhan plunged down the cliffside, carrying the unconscious Sharif. Deaf to Sarhan’s command, Leyla gripped the sobbing sultan by his robe front, threw him roughly to the ground, and straddled him.

Weeping, Mustafa began to plead for his life and to make wild promises. His kingdom would be hers if she spared him! It was her he wanted, only her. He loved her, worshiped her. Let him live and she would be immediately elevated to the exalted position of adored sultana, envied by all.

“Cowardly sniveling dog,” Leyla said contemptuously, and up went the scimitar.

The point pricked the side of his fleshy throat and she gave the blade a strong, decisive jerk, severing the jugular. Hot blood spewed forth, and Mustafa’s beady eyes widened with fear and pain.

“I hope you feel this, you evil bastard!”

And she whipped the blade sideways, slitting his fat throat from ear to ear. Then she spat in his dying face, shot to her feet, and fled down the rocky cliffs.

The deep silence of the desert
was even more silent than usual.

Deathly silent.

The bedside lamp burned low in the darkness of the black desert night. The still, quiet bedroom and the still, quiet man in the room’s bed were cast into deep shadow.

A circle of mellow light spilling from the single lamp lighted the blond head of the still, silent woman seated beside the bed. It softly illuminated, as well, a pair of pale slender hands enclosing a lean, bronzed hand.

And it revealed that the Starfire ruby on the third finger of that dark masculine hand had lost its brilliant red color.

The stone was black.

Dead black.

Temple had been at the Sheik’s bedside for the past twenty-four hours. She had been there when the French surgeon had removed the bullet from the unconscious Sheik. She had been there when the Sheik had tossed and turned in feverish delirium. She had used her body to press him back to the mattress when he’d thrashed wildly about, incoherent and in pain.

She had bathed his clammy face with cool water, murmured to him as one would to a child, and promised—even though he could not hear her—that she would not leave him.

She would
never
leave him.

Temple had been there with tears streaming down her cheeks when the unconscious Sheik, agitated, unable to lie still, had mumbled and murmured in Arabic.
“Naksedil, Naksedil,”
he’d whispered frantically, over and over. Temple knew he was talking to her, but she didn’t know what he was saying.

The Sheik’s faithful servant, Tariz, had been there, too. The worried Tariz had stayed at his master’s bedside continuously, just as Temple had.

He was there now, as still and silent as the desert night. Seated in the shadows on the far side of the bed, Tariz watched quietly over the deathly pallid Sheik.

And over the sad young woman who loved him.

Tariz knew how much Temple was suffering. Time after time through their long, shared vigil, she had wept brokenheartedly and told the lifeless Sheik she was sorry, so sorry. When she was not apologizing to the unresponsive Sheik, she was apologizing to Tariz.

She had, she admitted, been unforgivably thoughtless and foolish when she’d struck him on the head that fateful morning and fled alone into the deserts. She regretted the rash, unpardonable act more than she could say, and she only wished there was some way she could make it up to them both, to him and the Sheik.

Tariz watched her now, and his tender heart went out to her.

Distraught, feeling as if it were her fault the Sheik lay near death, Temple clung to his limp brown hand and silently begged him to open his beautiful eyes and look at her. To wake up. To speak to her.

To live.

She lowered her face, kissed his fingertips one by one, then laid her tear-streaked cheek against his muscular forearm. She closed her burning eyes, recalling unhappily how—once they were away from the sultan’s seaside palace—she had begged the Sheik’s men to keep going up the coast until they reached a city where Sharif could be treated at a hospital.

But they had refused.

A few miles up the sea they had turned the motor launch back into land. On shore a dozen of the Sheik’s men had been waiting with fresh, speedy horses. Four had volunteered to take young Samira back to her parents and Leyla to the destination of her choice.

The rest of the party, including Temple and the wounded Sharif, had ridden straight up into the hills and back across the desert. Temple had argued that they were endangering the Sheik’s life. He wouldn’t live unless he was tended immediately—for God’s sake, take him to a doctor!