LITMIR.BIZ

      ALEXANDRA SELLERS

      is the author of over twenty-five novels and a feline language text published in 1997 and still selling.

      Born and raised in Canada, Alexandra first came to London, England, as a drama student. Now she lives near Hampstead Heath with her husband, Nick. They share housekeeping with Monsieur, who jumped through the window one day and announced, as cats do, that he was moving in.

      I would like to thank the following

       for their generously given expert advice and help

      Pete Godwin, aviator

       Mark Hofton, designer

       Jennifer Nauss, friend and editor

       Geoff Tetley, life raft specialist

       Jo and Dennis Wallace, world sailors

      and AVON LIFE RAFTS

      I couldn’t have done it without you

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Epilogue

      One

      Princess Noor pushed the fold of her bridal veil away from her face with an impatient hand and blinked out the cockpit window, her mouth opening on a soundless breath.

      Cloud. A thick, grey-white mass blanketing the distant mainland as far as she could see.

      But she had no instrument rating. She couldn’t fly in cloud.

      “It can’t be!” she whispered, aghast. Sunlight still glinted merrily from the rich turquoise of the Gulf of Barakat beneath her, but that offered no solution when she had had zero practice putting the little amphibian plane down on water.

      Why hadn’t she noticed the cloud building up? She should have taken evasive action long ago. Had the yards of billowing tulle on her head confused her vision? Or had the humiliation gnawing at her stomach distracted her?

      As if waking out of a dream now, Noor shook her head and looked around.

      What was she doing here?

      She hadn’t even stopped to remove her veil before taking off into the unknown. Hadn’t checked the weather. Didn’t have a destination. Her only thought had been to put as much distance as she could between herself and marriage to Sheikh Bari al Khalid.

      She gazed out at the cloud again, her heart beating fast. She might have put a very permanent distance between them. If that cloud caught up with her, she wouldn’t be marrying anyone. Ever.

      It had begun—when had it begun? When her parents’ families fled their beautiful country in the aftermath of Ghasib’s coup thirty-odd years before and both chose Australia? When the two young expatriate Bagestanis who became her parents had fallen in love and married?

      Or had it begun only months ago, when the royal family’s long struggle to regain the throne had at last been successful, culminating in Sultan Ashraf’s now-legendary ride to the gates of the Old Palace through streets crammed with cheering, delirious multitudes?

      “We loff heem!” the populace had cried, dancing, singing, laughing and crying, and even a jaded television reporter had unashamedly wiped a tear from her cheek.

      Yes, perhaps that was the real beginning. For that was when Noor Ashkani’s comfortable, predictable life had been tumbled into a disorder so shocking and startling she seemed to herself to have become a different person.

      That was when her father had made his world-shattering announcement. When the family, like so many other exiled Bagestanis around the world, were watching events unfold on television, weeping and hugging each other in a powerful combination of hope, fear and joy, her father had pointed at the image of the stern, noble face of Sultan Ashraf al Jawadi on the screen, and said, “Now it can be told. You are not what you think. He is your cousin.”

      Cousin! That man on the white horse soon to be crowned Sultan of Bagestan! And not a distant cousin, either. Noor’s mother was the daughter of the deposed Sultan Hafzuddin and his second wife, the French-woman named Sonia. Her father was descended from the old Sultan’s sister. They owned palaces and property, seized by Ghasib, which would now be returned to them. They were titled.

      So no longer was she Noor Ashkani, daughter of a wealthy Bagestani exile who had made good in his adopted country. She was Sheikha Noor Yasmin al Jawadi Durrani, granddaughter of the deposed Sultan of Bagestan, cousin to the present Sultan-to-be,

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