He looked over, snaring her gaze.
‘You’re very quiet,’ he said. ‘Are you finding the journey too tiring?’
‘Not at all,’ she answered truthfully. Khaled had been right. She’d concentrated so much on completing the wedding dress that she’d barely been out of the workroom. In many ways it was exciting to be out of the palace and away from the city. ‘Jebbai is much bigger than it looks on the map.’
He smiled, showing his even white teeth. ‘We are one of the smaller independent states, it is true, though the desert certainly makes the country seem much larger. There is more to see in terms of civilisation to the south, where the oil fields are situated. Here it is very empty, apart from the occasional tribe.’
‘Well, at least you have four-wheel drives to get around these days. Beats the heck out of doing it all by camel.’
‘Is that experience talking, or supposition?’
‘Of course I’ve ridden on camels, lots of times.’ She brushed her fringe out of her eyes. ‘Nothing to it.’
He looked quickly over at her again but this time as if he didn’t believe a word she said.
‘Really. There are loads of camels in Australia, out in the outback. Leftovers gone wild from the eighteen-hundreds when they used them for transport. Now they catch them and the handlers bring them into the cities and use them to take kids for rides at the beach or at the annual shows. It makes a change from pony rides.
‘Our nanny used to take us all to one of the beaches every year for an outing and we’d have a ride together. Opal, our older sister, loved the ponies the best. But with Ruby, my twin sister, and me, it was always the camels.’
‘I’m impressed,’ he said, a note of approval creeping into his voice. ‘You’re quite a multi-talented woman.’
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘Okay, you can laugh. But it was fun anyway.’
‘Who said I’m laughing?’ he said with all seriousness. ‘You just never know when a skill like camel riding will come in handy.’
Behind her sunglasses she rolled her eyes, before turning them back to the endless dunes. ‘Sure,’ she said, dismissing him yet secretly pleased that in just one small way she’d managed to surprise him. He seemed a different person when they could touch on neutral topics, when whatever grievances he brought to their other dealings could be put aside.
It was at least twenty minutes before either of them spoke again. The road had all but disappeared under the drifting sands and her seat was getting less comfortable, the bumps were getting more pronounced and she was generally sick of the vehicle’s grinding progress through the dunes.
She reached for her bottle of water and took a swig. ‘How far now?’
‘We’ll be stopping soon.’
‘We’re nearly there?’
‘Wait,’ he said, the unexpected smile on his face warming her. ‘I think you’re going to like this.’
It wasn’t long before she found out what he meant. They pulled into a relatively flat area, really no more than a space between dunes and dominated by an ancient and squat mud-brick building. It was the end of the road, literally, and what there was to like about it was anyone’s guess.
The vehicles parked side by side under a lean-to and men started unloading the supplies.
‘You might want to take this opportunity to freshen up,’ Khaled suggested. He reached behind the front seat. ‘And here, you might want to put this on. It will protect you from the sun and the sand.’
She took the bundle he held up to her. ‘Why should I need this now?’ she asked.
‘Our journey is not quite over,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
He focused on something behind her. ‘See for yourself,’ he said.
A protesting bawl told her what she’d see before she turned.
‘Camels!’ she cried.
The man leading the first camels, his coiled-turban-framed face all leathery wrinkles from years of exposure to the desert sun, broke into a wide grin at her delight, revealing just three remaining teeth.
She reached up and stroked the nose of the first camel. It looked down at her, its thickly lashed, doe-like eyes considering her briefly, before lifting its head and letting out another loud bawl.