The Governess and the Sheikh Read Online Free PDF Page A

potentially vulnerable. She stood up,placing a restraining hand on her sister’s arm. ‘Maybe it is best that you should take a little more time, stay here for a few more days before committing yourself.’
    â€˜I have decided. And in any case, it is all arranged. You are worried that Prince Jamil may have designs on me, I can see it in your face, but you need not, I assure you. Even if he did—which seems to me most unlikely, for though in England I pass for a beauty, here in Arabia they admire a very different kind of woman—it would come to nothing. I told you, I am done with men, and I am done for ever with love.’
    â€˜Then I must be done with trying to persuade you to reconsider,’ Celia said lightly, realising that further protestations on her part would only unsettle Cassie further. ‘Come then, let me help you pack, for the caravan must leave at first light.’

Chapter Two
    A t dawn the next day, Cassie bade Celia a rather tearful goodbye and set off, following closely behind Prince Ramiz, who led the caravan through the dark and empty streets of Balyrma and out into the desert. She wore the royal blue linen riding habit she’d had Papa’s tailor make up especially for this trip, which she fervently hoped would not prove too stifling in the arid heat of the desert. The skirt was wide enough to ensure she could sit astride a camel with perfect modesty. The little jacket was cut in military style, with a high collar and a double row of buttons, but was otherwise quite plain, relying on the severity of the masculine cut to emphasise the femininity of the form beneath it. By the time the caravan began to make its way through the first mountain pass, however, the sun was rising and Cassie was wishing that a less clinging style was currently more fashionable. Though she wore only athin chemise under her corset, and no other petticoats, she was already frightfully hot.
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    The first two days’ travel took a toll on both her appearance and spirits. The heat seared her face through her veil so that her skin felt as if it were being baked in a bread oven. Her throat ached from the dust and constant thirst, and the unfamiliar sheen of perspiration made her chemise cling like an unpleasant second skin that had her longing to cast both stays and stockings to the winds.
    The excitement of the journey was at first more than compensation for these discomforts. The dramatically shifting scenery of ochre-red mountains and undulating golden dunes, the small grey-green patches that marked the location of oases, the ever-changing blue of the sky and the complete otherness of the landscape all fascinated Cassie, appealing at an elemental level to her romantic heart.
    Until, that is, she started to lose sensation in the lower half of her body. The camel’s saddle, a high-backed wooden affair with a padded velvet seat that gave it a quite misleading air of comfort, began, on the second day, to feel like an instrument of torture. Renowned horsewoman that she was, Cassie was used to the relative comfort of a leather saddle with the security of a pommel, ridden for pleasure rather than used as a mode of long-distance transport. Six hours was the longest she’d ever spent on horseback. Counting up the time since she’d left Celia at the royal palace, she reckoned she’d been aboard the plodding camel for all but eight hours out of the last thirty-six. What hadbegun as a pleasant swaying motion when they had first started out, now felt more like a side-to-side lurching. Her bottom was numb and her legs ached. What’s more, she was covered from head to toe in dust and sand, her lashes gritty with it, her mouth and nose equally so, for she had been forced to put up her veil in order to see her way as dusk fell and Ramiz urged his entourage on, anxious to make the pre-arranged meeting point by nightfall.
    Sway left, sway right, sway forward. Sway left, sway right, sway