The Governess and the Sheikh. Marguerite Kaye
her pride. What use was pride, after all? She had no right to it, and no use for it either, if it prevented her from using all her powers to persuade the prince that she was worthy of his trust. ‘I don’t know what came over me—when you—when you—when I allowed you to kiss me, I mean,’ she said, blushing madly but forcing herself to continue to meet those strange golden brown eyes. ‘I can only assure you that I am not in the habit of allowing—of indulging—in kissing.’
‘I know,’ Jamil said, surprised out of his rigid hold on his control by this naïve admission.
‘You do?’
‘Your kisses were hardly expert.’
Cassie wasn’t sure if this was an insult or a compliment. Though she was much inclined to pursue this very interesting question, for once sense prevailed and she held her tongue. ‘Anyway, whatever they were or were not, I assure you I won’t subject you to them again.’
Despite his determination not to be persuaded, Jamil was intrigued. And amused. It had been so long since he had found anyone so entertaining as Lady Cassandra. Or so—confounding. Unexpected. Interesting. He would be quite happy to be subjected again to her kisses. More than happy. The question was, was this a good thing or a bad? ‘My daughter.’
‘Linah.’
‘She is.’
‘Unhappy.’
He raised a supercilious brow. ‘I was going to say difficult.’
‘Yes, but that’s because she’s unhappy.’
‘Nonsense. She has no reason to be so. She has everything any little girl could wish for.’
‘Children are not born difficult, they are difficult for a reason,’ Cassie persisted, feeling herself on surer ground. ‘The trick is to work out what that reason is. Linah is only eight years old, she has not the language to express her feelings properly. So instead she expresses them by.’
‘Being difficult.’ Jamil pondered this. All his experience told him that leniency was the root cause of Linah’s tantrums. It had not occurred to him until now that Linah could actually be unhappy; he had assumed that withholding the harsh physical discipline which had been meted out to him would be enough. Could he be wrong? The thought was discomfiting.
‘You see, I do understand little girls,’ Cassie continued, sensing from the look on the prince’s face that she had struck a chord. ‘I want nothing more than to help Linah. If we could forget about what happened tonight—make a fresh start in the morning …’
Jamil raised an imperious hand. ‘Enough. I admit, you’ve given me food for thought, but it’s late. I will sleep on it and inform you of my decision in the morning.’
‘Sleep is the wisest counsel. That’s what my sister Celia always says.’
Jamil smiled properly this time, showing a fleeting hint of a single dimple. ‘My father used to say something similar. I will bid you goodnight, Lady Cassandra.’
Dazzled by the way his face changed, from intimidating sheikh to an extraordinarily attractive and somehow more youthful man, Cassie gazed up at him. Only his turning to go brought her to her senses. ‘Goodnight, Highness,’ she said, dropping another curtsy. By the time she emerged from it, he was gone.
Chapter Three
The next morning found Jamil, most unusually for him, still in two minds. It did not help that Lady Cassandra had haunted his dreams. It did not help that the memory of her lips, her skin, her nubile body, had awakened his own slumbering desires, conjuring endless teasing fantasies that made sleep impossible. He had finally quit his divan in desperation, plunging into the refreshing water of the pool before dawn had even risen, in an effort to cool his body and order his mind. He was quite unused to such carnal thoughts getting in the way of his decision-making process. The base needs of his body had never before intruded on the logical processes of his brain. Lady Cassandra confused him by blurring the neatly ordered boundaries of his mind. She was made for pleasure. She was here for a much more pragmatic purpose.
Returning to his tent to don his travelling clothes, Jamil resorted to drawing up a mental list of the advantages and disadvantages of employing Lady Cassandra as Linah’s governess, and in doing so uncovered one of the questions that had been niggling away in the back of his mind. Lady Cassandra had said she urgently needed an opportunity to prove herself. Why? he wondered. Prove herself after what?
It was the first question he put to her when she appeared before him in the makeshift throne room. She wore her travelling outfit, the blue riding habit and veil in which she had arrived yesterday, and was at pains to keep her head correctly bowed, but Jamil was in no mood to allow her to hide behind the trappings of propriety. He bade the servants draw forwards the light curtains and instructed her to put back her veil. He did not, however, bid her sit, choosing to keep her standing before him, like a supplicant. ‘Explain to me, if you please, what you meant by needing an opportunity to prove yourself,’ he said in clipped tones.
Cassie stared at the prince in consternation. All through the long night she had rehearsed her arguments and mustered her reasons, drilling them into a tight formation, readying them to be paraded, impeccable and indisputable, before the prince. She was ready to recite lesson plans in everything from watercolour painting to deportment, map reading to account keeping, playing upon the pianoforte—though she wasn’t particularly sure that such an instrument would be available—French conversation—though she didn’t know, when it came down to it, if Linah even spoke English—botany—though she had no idea what flowers—if any—grew in the desert—and horse riding, the one subject on which Cassie knew herself to be expert. All of this she had ready at her fingertips, along with her ideas for instilling strict but fair discipline, and most of all her ardent desire to give Linah some much-needed affection.
But it seemed Prince Jamil was not interested in any of this. Instead he wanted to know about her motives, a subject Cassie herself was a little hazy on, just at the moment. ‘I suppose I meant that it would be good to be of use,’ she fumbled.
Prince Jamil’s mouth tightened. ‘Of all things, I abhor prevarication. It leads, more often than not, to deceit. If you are to be my daughter’s governess, I must be able to trust you implicitly. To deceive me as to your motives.’
‘Oh, no, I would never do that.’
‘Then I ask you again, what precipitated this burning desire to prove yourself?’
Blushing, Cassie shuffled from one foot to the other, trying desperately to find a way of satisfying the prince’s curiosity without putting herself in too unflattering a light, but a glance up at his stern countenance told her she would do far better to give him the unvarnished truth. He would not tolerate anything else, and she most assuredly did not want to risk being discovered in what he would then assume to be a lie. She clasped her hands together and began the sorry tale of her ill-fated betrothal to Augustus, though telling it rather to her riding boot than to Prince Jamil, not daring to look up for fear that his countenance would betray his disapproval.
‘I made a mistake, a terrible lack of judgement,’ she concluded. ‘Had I not been so headstrong, so indulgent of my sentimental inclinations, I and my family would have perhaps been spared the humiliation of my being so publicly jilted.’
‘But surely it is this man Augustus—if you can call such a desert scorpion a man—surely it is he who should feel shame?’ Jamil said contemptuously. ‘You are the innocent party. He, on the other hand, has behaved in a manner that shows a complete lack of honour and integrity. He deserves to be the outcast, not you.’
Cassie shook her head. ‘It is not how the world sees it, nor indeed how my—my papa sees it.’
‘In my world we would see such a thing quite differently.’
Cassie jutted her