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Eleni’s unexpected glimpse of herself in a mirror. How long since she had looked in a mirror? Not since school. Her father had banned them in the house as being indicators of vanity and there had seemed little need for her to gaze at herself.
    But now she did and the sight which greeted her could not have been worse. Her face was engrained with desert dirt—and streaking over her cheeks were paler tracts where beads of sweat must have trickled down during the long, hot ride here. Her thick hair was dull and desperately in need of a wash and her clothes were covered with a fine layer of sand.
    Eleni almost wept. Where was any trace of her femininity? Why, she looked more like a street urchin than a woman! With trembling fingers she pulled the dirty garments from her body—but as she turned she was confronted by another mirror and, in a way, this was even worse.
    It was a full-length glass and she stared into it with a kind of horrified fascination at an Eleni she didn’t recognise. How rounded her little breasts looked—and how pink their tips. She had not realised how curved her body had become—or that her waist was as tiny as the trunk of a young walnut tree. And there was more, too…
    For the first time she could see the dark triangle of hair which lay at the fork of her thighs and she shrank back in fear, resolutely turning her back on the image to climb into the bath. She let the warm water glide over her aching limbs with a sense of relief.
    And disbelief.
    Because this was Eleni’s first real taste of luxury and once again she almost wept, only this time with sheer joy, wondering how any experience could feel so utterly pleasurable.
    She had learnt to find her enjoyment in simple things—like the feel of the wind on her hair when she was riding Nabat or the sight of a particularly beautiful sunset, sinking over the mighty splendour of the mountain. But this felt different. It felt…
    Restlessly, Eleni stirred as ripples of water tickled at her skin and picked up the beautifully scented bar of soap. Her washing usually consisted of a hasty early-morning cold-water scrub in the outhouse while the rest of the world was sleeping. Yet just the touch of this soap was…was…
    She swallowed as it foamed up into a creamy cascade of foam over her skin and she felt the oddest sensation as she tentatively stroked some onto her breast. A face swam into her mind. A dark, mocking face with hard black eyes and cruel, curving lips.
    The soap dropped into the water with a splash and as Eleni hauled herself out of the bath with flailing and slippery limbs she couldn’t seem to stop herself from trembling.
    CHAPTER FOUR
    NEXT morning, Eleni arrived at the stable block soon after sunrise. Her first night’s sleep at the palace had been restless, probably because of the rich food she’d been given for dinner in the staff kitchen—food which she had been astonished to discover she was not expected to cook for herself.
    Eleni had never been waited on in her life. Nor felt soft silk against her skin when she had worn some of her new clothes down to supper. But before she had bedded down for the night, she had washed out her old things—more out of habit than anything else. She had hung them out on a rail in the bathroom and put them on this morning. That way she felt more comfortable. More like herself.
    With a spring in her step she greeted Nabat, who came whinnying up to greet her.
    ‘Hello, boy,’ she murmured. ‘You look happy!’ She mucked him out and then exercised him—and while he was eating his oats—went over to look at all the sheikh’s other horses. They were, as she might have expected, all utterly magnificent—but the finest of all was a huge black stallion at the far end of the yard. It was Kaliq’s horse! The one he had ridden into her father’s yard, the first time she’d seen him.
    She could see that he was aristocratic and highly strung and at first he stared at her with suspicious eyes. But she