Читать книгу The Scandalous Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 27

THEY flew out of Mumbai, its crowded streets swarming with busy life and brilliant with the vibrant colours of its fabrics and decoration that Sophia had already come to feel somehow warmed against the coldness of the loss of her dreams and the harshness of reality that was chilling her heart. It was just after night had fallen, so that below them, the city was a brilliant spangle of multicoloured lights against the darkness of the night sky.

Ash glanced towards Sophia as she sat still strapped in her seat, and looking out of the jet’s cabin window. He heard her indrawn breath and saw that they were flying over Marine Drive with its plethora of lights.

‘They call it the Queen’s Necklace,’ he told her.

Sophia nodded her head. After all those teenage dreams of becoming Ash’s wife, the mundane reality of the two of them together with nothing of any importance to say to each other was certainly not what her fevered longings had once imagined. But then conversation of any kind hadn’t featured in those teenage longings, Sophia was forced to acknowledge, other than a passionate ‘I love you’ murmured in between the unrestrained passion of Ash’s kisses and caresses.

‘Nailpur isn’t Mumbai,’ Ash felt obliged to warn Sophia as they left the city behind and headed west.

‘No, I know,’ Sophia answered him. ‘I loved what I saw of Mumbai but I’m really looking forward to seeing Nailpur and Rajasthan. I read somewhere that the name translates as the Land of Kings. My father would certainly approve of that.’

‘Nailpur isn’t Jaipur, nor is it any of the other well-known and well-established tourist destinations of Rajasthan. Nailpur is a poor state, its people uneducated, its palaces crumbling. It is my duty to lift my people from that poverty. The days when the maharaja class could live a life of luxury whilst their people endured poverty are not something that can be tolerated any more. And just as it is my duty to lift my people from that poverty so it is also my duty to live amongst them. Your duty as my wife and the mother of my children will be to live with me. So if you were hoping to live in Mumbai—’

‘I am not.’ Sophia stopped him, too cast down to feel like telling him that as a girl she had read everything she could about Rajasthan in general and Nailpur in particular simply because then she had seen it as a part of him and she had wanted to know every thing she could about him.

He couldn’t allow this marriage to turn out like his first, Ash thought. No matter what either of them felt, this marriage would endure and not just for the sake of his pride. Only a son brought up to understand and value their family history and the history of their people could truly take his place when the time came.

A royal bride with royal blood was something that his people with their conventional outlook on life, and their belief in the old feudal codes of family and marriage, would expect. He knew that. He had always known it.

A royal bride whose royalty would satisfy the traditional desires of his people.

And a woman whose sensuality would satisfy the desire she aroused in him in a way that his first marriage had denied him?

As always, whenever he thought about the failure and disappointment of his first marriage, guilt gripped him. Must the whole of his life be shadowed by the mistakes he had made then? Nasreen had died because of those mistakes, Ash reminded himself.

The truth was that he had married expecting to give and find love within that marriage and when he had found that love could not be forced by either of them he had retreated from Nasreen. He had allowed her to live her own life because of his own anger and disappointment, because of the blow to his pride of the reality of their marriage, and his discovery that no amount of willpower on his part could ignite the love he had been so arrogantly sure they would share. Because of that Nasreen had died. He could never allow himself to forget that.

Where Sophia was concerned things were different. There could and would be no emotional complications. It was safer that way.

The plane had started to lose height, and below them in the silvery light from the moon and the stars Sophia could see acres of plastic tunnelling of the kind used to grow crops. Turning to Ash, who had been working on his computer throughout the flight, she said curiously, ‘I thought this area was too dry for crops and that was why the people were poor and nomadic?’

‘It is, but the experts I commissioned discovered an underground river that we’ve been able to tap into via bore holes and this has allowed us to begin cultivating crops. The people are used to traditional ways and it isn’t always easy persuading them to accept new technology. However, I intend to persist. Our water supply is a precious resource, so in addition to educating the people about modern methods of cultivation we also want to educate them to use this resource wisely. The reason I commissioned experts to look into the possibility of an underground source of water was because I’d seen paintings of my great-great-grandfather’s indoor bathing pool—it no longer exists but obviously the water had to come from somewhere, and fortunately my guesswork proved to be correct.’

The seat-belt light flashed. Sophia had been relieved to discover that the steward on this flight was not the same one who had been on their previous flight, and she was even more thankful when the plane came to a standstill and the door was opened to see that there were no photographers waiting for them, merely a small group of officials.

Ash had telephoned ahead to his Royal Council to tell them of his marriage, and duly introduced Sophia to them once they had left the plane. As a royal daughter she was well versed in the formality of such things and Ash could see the looks of relief and approval on the faces of his officials as they welcomed her. She had surprised him with her knowledge about the area, he admitted as they were ushered into the waiting limousine, the crest of his ancestors on its door and on the pennant flag flying from the bonnet. Ritual and the preservation of tradition were very important to his senior officials, many of whom could remember not just his parents but also his grandparents before the terrible monsoon floods in the area in which they had been staying had swept them away to their deaths.

Their car left the modern highway which had sped them from the airport through agricultural land and towards the walled city, whose main gate was flanked by huge stone tigers, similar to those in the car’s family crest they were now driving. Sophia held her breath. She wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting. She’d read of the fabled cities of Rajasthan but there had been very little information about Nailpur, other than a description of its architecture as being typically Rajput in its beauty and richness.

Now, though, as they emerged from the gate in the wall, despite the fact that it was late at night, Sophia could see how busy the city was, the narrow street barely wide enough for the limousine flanked by impressive-looking stone buildings, their narrow windows shuttered and sightless. Up ahead of them the street opened out into a busy square thronged with people. Motorcyclists, often carrying several passengers, eased their way past camels adorned with colourful tassels and enamelled jewellery, their awkward progress accompanied by the stately elegance of the women who accompanied them, the colours and intricate embroidery of their traditional clothing captivating Sophia as she leaned closer to the car window to see them.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the steps to some of the elegant buildings enclosing the square were filled with merchants selling their wares, rich spices, colourful flowers, a joyful display of enamelled bangles. Instead of saris or salwar kameez, the women in the square were wearing brilliantly coloured gathered skirts with tightly fitting blouses, one end of the veils they were wearing tucked into their waistbands then taken over the right shoulder to cover their heads.

Sophia looked as entranced as a child, Ash realised as he glanced at her and saw the way she was leaning towards the window as though anxious not to miss anything. Nasreen had disliked the traditionalism of Nailpur. She had rarely worn Indian dress, preferring Western couture outfits. The sari she had been wearing when she had died had been the cause of a row between them. He had asked her to wear it to a formal event to which they’d been invited earlier in the day in honour of the women of Nailpur who had so lovingly made the beautiful sari for her as a wedding gift. Wearing it had killed her as much as her reckless driving had. He had made her wear it. He had killed her. The old guilt sat within him, a cold leaden weight from which there was no escape even if he had been prepared to allow himself it.

They crossed the square, their progress the subject of curious but discreet attention from Ash’s subjects, and then they were going down another narrow cobbled roadway, with women sitting outside doorways attending to cooking pots whilst children played around them. The road widened out, the buildings either side of it becoming larger and far more intricately adorned with filigree balconies and impressive doorways, and then they were in another square and in front of them was the palace flanked on either side by imposing buildings of a similar stature.

As someone who had grown up in a royal palace, Sophia had not expected to be overwhelmed by Nailpur’s, but when they had been welcomed into it by a guard of men in traditional dress with huge Rajasthani turbans, she had been unable to stop herself from turning to Ash and commenting, slightly awed, ‘How impressive they look and so very fierce. Far more so than my father’s uniformed guard. Their turbans are gorgeous.’

‘Rajasthan’s warriors are known for their ferocity in battle and their loyalty to their leaders. As for their turbans, their style and colour indicates the wearer’s status,’ Ash informed Sophia. ‘That is why these men—members of what was once the Royal Guard—are wearing scarlet turbans that mirrors the background colour of my family crest.’

‘They certainly are magnificent,’ Sophia responded, pausing as they reached the top of the cream marble steps inlaid with contrasting bands of dark green onyx to ask him, ‘I suppose you wore traditional dress for your marriage to Nasreen?’

‘Yes,’ Ash answered her in a dismissive tone that warned her it wasn’t a subject he wanted to discuss. Nevertheless it was hard for her not to imagine the emotional significance of such a wedding with all its history of tradition and culture and the happiness with which Ash must have committed himself to his bride.

What was the reason for the pain that was stabbing through her? Her ability to suffer pain over the realisation that Ash loved someone else and not her had burned itself out a long time ago. Scars sometimes ached long after the original pain had gone, Sophia reminded herself. It meant nothing other than a reminder not to invite that kind of hurt again.

They were inside the grand reception hall to the palace with its alabaster columns decorated with gold leaf, and its marble floor. Long, low, carved-and-gilded wooden sofas ornamented with beautiful, intricate and richly coloured silk cushions stood in elegant alcoves, prisms of light dancing across the floor from the many hanging lanterns suspended from the ceiling. The scent of jasmine wafted in the air and rose petals floated in the ceremonial gold-embossed bowls of water that were brought in for Ash and Sophia to wash their hands.

A maid dressed in a gold-and-cream salwar kameez was summoned to take Sophia to her room after Ash had informed her that they would be eating within the hour.

Upstairs and along a corridor decorated with what Sophia suspected were priceless works of art, she was escorted into what the maid explained to her in halting English were the private rooms of the palace’s maharani.

‘There is no seraglio here any more as His Highness’s great-grandfather married for love and had only one wife. She closed it down, but it is still our tradition that the maharani has her own apartment.’

Behind the fretted and gilded doorway, with its secret ‘windows’ that allowed those behind it to look out into the corridor beyond without being seen, lay an elegant hallway ornamented with mirrors and alcoves for the lanterns that reflected in them. A pair of highly decorated wooden doors opened out into a much larger room, its polished wooden floors covered in beautiful woven rugs whilst sofas similar to those she had seen downstairs were dotted around the room.

A huge chandelier illuminated the room’s vastness, throwing out sparkling light into the muted shadows of the large room. At one end of it, shutters opened out onto an enclosed illuminated courtyard garden with stairs going down to it from a balcony, the sound of running water reaching her ears from the rill of water below.

‘It is very beautiful,’ Sophia told the waiting attendant, who gave her a beaming smile in response before telling her in careful English, ‘The bedroom is this way, please.’

The bedroom was more European than she had expected, vaguely thirties in its design, with stunning, delicately crafted lamps and light fittings. It had its own wardrobe-lined dressing room and bathroom.

The maid cleared her throat, sounding slightly anxious. ‘Please, I take you now to eat with the maharaja.’ Sophia stopped exploring her new domain further. She would have liked to have had a shower and changed her clothes before having dinner with Ash but there obviously wasn’t going to be time. As she followed the attendant through a maze of corridors she reflected that she needed to contact her family to have the contents of her own wardrobes at home sent over to her.

The girl stopped outside a door secured by two of the turbaned guards who both bowed low to her and then pulled open the double doors.

As she stepped into the room Sophia blinked in the brilliance of the reflected light that filled the room. Every surface within it, or so it seemed, was decorated with a mosaic of glittering metalwork inlaid with pieces of mirror that reflected the light from the suspended lanterns, whilst Ash sat waiting for her on a richly embroidered cushion in front of a low table loaded with a variety of small, tempting-looking dishes.

When Ash saw Sophia gazing around her he explained, ‘These mosaic-mirrored rooms were once considered to be a status symbol amongst the Rajput rulers. They are called sheesh mahals, which roughly translates as “halls of mirrors.”’

Two waiters stood ready to serve them but Ash dismissed them, telling Sophia after they had gone, ‘I prefer to dispense with formality when I can.’

Sophia nodded her head as she took her place on her own cushion. ‘I agree, although my father tends to prefer pomp and ceremony.’

‘With those who work here dependent on their wages it would be unfair to let them go, but I suspect they find my preference for independence and privacy somewhat bewildering. A need for personal privacy isn’t the Indian family way, but it is my way.’

Was he warning her off expecting any intimacy with him other than the intimacy that would be necessary in order for her to conceive?

‘The dishes in front of you are a traditional Rajasthani thali,’ Ash informed her, ‘and mostly vegetarian, although you will find that laal maas and safed maas, which are spicy mutton dishes, are very popular and an important speciality of the Rajput community.’

‘It all looks delicious,’ Sophia told him truthfully. She loved spicy food and had no hesitation in helping herself to the dishes on offer, although a certain apprehension was inhibiting her appetite. Just for food or for the intimacies of marriage, as well?

It was late when they had finally finished eating; a word from Ash to the staff who had come to clear away the remains of their meal resulted in the appearance of the maid who had attended Sophia earlier. As she turned to follow the waiting girl, Ash leaned towards her and told her quietly, ‘I will come to you in an hour if that is acceptable to you?’

Her heart started thumping heavily, her mouth going dry. There was no logical reason for her to be surprised. She knew why Ash had married her after all.

‘Yes. Yes,’ she managed to agree, stumbling slightly over the words, conscious of how gauche she must seem and even more conscious of how much difference there must be between her wedding night with Ash and the wedding night he had shared with Nasreen. Then, no doubt, Ash would have taken advantage of the intimacy provided by the soft cushions to pull his bride closer to him and perhaps feed her morsels of food while he whispered to her how much he loved her ….

She must not think like this. It weakened her and made her vulnerable and for no good purpose. The past was the past and she wasn’t an idealistic sixteen-year-old any more. It wasn’t being denied Ash’s love she grieved for, Sophia assured herself. It was the love she had so much longed to find with the man who would love her as Ash never had and never would. She grieved for what she would never know because of what she’d had to do.

Maybe in marrying as she had, putting duty before her own needs, she was proving to be more of a Santina than she had previously realised, Sophia admitted as she followed the maid, whose name she discovered was Parveen, back to her own apartment.

A silk nightdress was already laid out ready for her on her bed, and in the bathroom steam rose gently from the large, sunken, rectangular, mosaic-decorated bathing pool. Rose petals floated on the surface of the scented water.

‘Thank you, Parveen. I can manage on my own now.’ Sophia dismissed the maid.

An hour Ash had said. It had probably taken them a good ten minutes and more to walk back to her apartment, along the narrow twisting labyrinth of corridors, which Parveen explained had originally been designed to confuse enemy invaders.

In her bedroom Sophia undressed quickly, her hands all fingers and thumbs as her nervousness increased.

As tempting as the warm and fragrant water of her bath was, she didn’t dare linger in it just in case Ash arrived whilst she was still there. Clambering from it naked and dripping wet whilst he watched her was hardly going to add to her confidence.

Once she had dried herself she made her way back to the bedroom and looked at the silk nightdress. Ignoring it she wrapped herself in a towelling robe, instead. Maybe the knowledge that she was naked beneath its folds would ignite the same desire in Ash for her that knowing he was naked under his robe had ignited in her for him on the plane.

She could hear footsteps crossing the room beyond the bedroom. Her stomach tensed into tight knots of anxiety. Ash was bound to compare her to his first wife and no doubt find her wanting. Why had she done this? Because she had had no other choice, Sophia reminded herself as the richly painted wooden doors were opened and Ash walked into the bedroom.

He was wearing some kind of beautifully embroidered gold silk robe, its beauty instead of feminising him somehow actually intensifying his masculinity. His head was bare and the shadows of the room threw the sharp angle of his cheekbones into relief whilst concealing the expression in his eyes from her.

He had closed the doors. The room was so quiet Sophia could hear the sound of her own breathing.

‘If we are fortunate you will conceive quickly, which will spare us both the necessity of an ongoing intimacy that neither of us really wants.’

He had to make it clear to her that he had not married her out of any desire for her, Ash told himself as he caught the sound of Sophia’s indrawn breath. For Sophia’s benefit or for his own? Wasn’t it true that he had not been able to subdue the ache of need she had already aroused in him despite all his attempts to do so? And wasn’t it equally true that right now simply the sight of her and the knowledge of what was to come was accelerating the intensity of that need at a speed that he couldn’t control?

But he must control it. He must remember what this marriage was and why he had entered it.

He started to unfasten the closures to his robe—a traditional garment that had been laid out for him by his valet, and beneath which he was naked. Unable to take her gaze off him, Sophia watched with her heart in her mouth as he removed the ornate robe and then came towards her.

He was all male muscle and sinewy strength, long limbed and lean, his body possessed of all the classical male beauty of a Greek statue. She could see the scar on his thigh that she knew must be from a fall he’d had during a polo match that Alex had once mentioned to her. How she had hoarded all those little bits of knowledge about him, how she had clung to them as her own precious pieces of him, and how her sixteen-year-old self had hated herself for her weakness in doing so when he had turned his back on her to go to another woman. These were dangerous thoughts, taking her back to a time and place when all she had wanted was to give herself to Ash. Her heart started to race, the sudden surging ache deep inside her a growing wash of liquid heat that caressed her desire every bit as fiercely as she had once dreamed of Ash caressing her body. A small sound of female need strained against the taut muscles of her throat that were denying it a voice.

There was no need for her to question whether or not Ash was ready to consummate their marriage; she could see for herself that he was. Her heart was beating so fast she felt as though it might burst with her need to reach out and stroke her fingertips along the hard length of his erection in eager virginal exploration and delight.

A man—another man who was not him and who did not know that it was merely a practised gesture—would not be able to help having his male vanity aroused by the look that Sophia was giving him, Ash acknowledged. He fought against what it was doing to him, even though he knew it was a look she must have given innumerable men before him. Not that he had any right to expect a past sexual exclusivity from her, and nor did he do so. They were both adults with their own individual sexual histories. Histories, yes, but he would not tolerate infidelity from her now that they were married.

It was that thought, the thought of another man touching her now that she was his wife, that took him to her side, to untie her robe and push it from her shoulders, his hands sculpting the soft warm flesh of her body with a feather-light touch. So much lush sensuality was almost too much, Ash thought; it could overwhelm a man until he was trapped in his own desire to possess her. But that would not happen to him, he assured himself, and yet within him there was an urge, a need, to bury his face in the rich dark cloud of her hair, to breathe in the scent of her and then to change that delicate fragrance to something stronger and more elemental as he aroused her. He wanted to stroke his hands all over her, to draw the rigid peaks of her nipples between his fingers until she gasped with the urgency his touch aroused; he wanted to dip into the soft wetness of her sex and taste the juices of her desire for him, and only for him. He wanted … He wanted to possess her as no man had ever possessed her before, Ash recognised, that knowledge thundering through his mind.

He was a man, she was a woman. He had married her so that he could conceive a child with her. It was only because of that that he felt this intense desire to fill her senses and her body. Nothing more than that. It was time he did what he had come to her to do and stop listening to unwanted and illogical thoughts.

For all her lush curves, she was delicately boned and softly light in his arms as he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

His hands tightened on the narrowness of her waist as he laid her on the bed. He reached out and cupped her breast. Her flesh was silky soft and warm, her nipple immediately rising to his palm in stiff supplication.

He rolled her nipple between his forefinger and thumb, seeing her stomach go concave as she sucked in her breath and trembled.

She certainly knew all the pretty little tricks of making her partner feel desired. Well, two could play at that game. He curled the tip of his tongue round her other nipple and then teased it with darting strokes of deliberate arousal. Her whole body trembled, her thighs softening in instinctive invitation. He released her breast to stroke his hand down over her belly and then tease the vulnerable inside of her thigh with the gentle stroke of his knuckles.

Any minute now he was going to possess her. Her body knew that and wanted it, Sophia admitted, but her senses, her emotions, hungered for an intimacy that went beyond mere physical pleasure, no matter how skilled the giver of that pleasure was. She was lost, caught up in the powerful demands of a need that had its roots in the very deepest part of her sexual psyche. A longing she couldn’t hope to control forced its way past everything she had told herself this act between them must be in order for her to retain her pride. She wanted, craved, ached for more than Ash’s skilled touch against her flesh. She wanted the potency and the passion of his kisses.

Ash started to move between her thighs. As though the words were sprung from some trap deep within her, she heard herself begging him, ‘Kiss me, Ash. Kiss me.’ Reaching for him, sliding her hands into his hair, she pulled his face down towards her own, opening her mouth against his as the fiery hunger of her need spilled through her.

So much passion, too much passion. He should resist, pull back, but the sweetness of Sophia’s taste, the quick eager flicking movements of her tongue tip against his lips as though it was a hummingbird unable to survive without the nectar of his kiss, pulled him down, down into a place where his own senses couldn’t deny the savagely sensual urge she was creating within him to take her mouth and crush it beneath his own until they were one breath.

Wasn’t that dangerous? Because he was afraid that if he kissed her he … He what? He wouldn’t be able to stop? No, of course not. Could he prove that to himself? Of course he could.

‘If kisses are what you want then kisses are what you will have,’ he told her against her mouth as her lips trembled beneath his and the sweet boldness of her daring became an inferno of pulsating need that possessed every inch of her body.

Ash was leaning over her, his hands tangling in her hair as he kissed the side of her throat slowly and gently, and then nibbled on her ear, his thumb stroking the sensitive secret place just behind it.

A soft sound of delight bubbled in Sophia’s throat, her eyes wide open and dark with an arousal she made no attempt to hide as she looked at him.

She was the most sensual woman he had ever touched. Everything about her was a hot sweet tide of melting female desire that begged him to complete her. No woman had ever looked at him with such open need, turned to him with such confidence in his ability to satisfy that need. No woman had ever unleashed within him an answering torrent of unstoppable longing for her.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. But he had and now he couldn’t stop.

He cupped her head to hold her still beneath him and then plundered her mouth in a kiss that stamped her with his possession as surely as though he had penetrated her and filled her body with his sex, until her own sensuality stormed through her, demanding her submission to its needs and to him.

Sophia couldn’t contain her own aroused need and delight. Her hands were on Ash’s forearms, her fingers curling round them, her body arching up to his in a blatant offer that, driven by his own compelling need, Ash was incapable of refusing.

As the white-hot power of her unleashed passion poured through her, Sophia felt the first surging movement of Ash’s body within her own. A fiercely wild sense of joy gripped her. She moved with him, eager for his full possession.

Ash thrust deeper into her and then stopped, in stunned shock and disbelief, as his body fought against what his brain was telling him, the effort it took him to leash his need causing his body to throb with unsatisfied desire. There was a barrier in his way that shouldn’t have been there, the barrier of virginity. His brain recognised that. His body, though, ached and pulsed, his flesh demanding that he allowed it to complete what it had started and satisfy its need. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not until he knew what was going on.

Lying beneath him Sophia was filled with the urgency of her own unappeased need. He couldn’t stop now. Not now when she needed and wanted him so much. Lost in her own desire Sophia had forgotten all about her virginity, but now with Ash pulling back from her and her body still crying out for him she realised what was happening. She had to stop him leaving her. She had to. Female determination filled her as she deliberately tightened her muscles around him.

‘You want me to conceive,’ she reminded him. ‘That’s why we’re doing this.’

It was true but more than that the movement of her body against his was destroying his attempt at self-control. Ash could feel it slipping, draining away from him as desire for her roared over him. He moved within her, intending to pull back, but somehow his body surged forward and once it had and she was moving with him, making those soft urgent cries of pleasure and need, it was impossible for him to stop what was happening. The barrier parted, the look on Sophia’s face as she cried out one of satisfaction and delight rather than one of pain.

Now she had what she had wanted for so long. Now he was hers. Truly hers in the most intimate way possible. Now he had taken what she had always wanted to give him and her body was responding to his possession with the pleasure she had always known it would, wave after wave of it, each one bearing her higher, making her want to take him deeper and deeper within her as she wrapped her legs around him and held him to her more eagerly with each urgent thrust of his possession.

The climax was swift and intense—for both of them—leaving Sophia gasping and shuddering with the intensity of her pleasure as Ash watched her and cursed himself in silence whilst the red mist of his desire for her evaporated to leave him gripped by anger and guilt.

Nothing about his coming together with Sophia had been as he had expected or as he had prepared for. He had expected the sex to be good, but controlled, a coming together of two experienced people who knew the value of sexual pleasure but who would remain free of any emotional involvement in that pleasure. It would be strictly physical, and strictly controlled, but somehow Sophia had got under his skin, and under his self-control. Because Sophia had welcomed him where Nasreen had rejected him, telling him on their wedding night that his love was the last thing she wanted? Telling him that her love had already been given to someone else and that that someone was a married man with whom she had been having a secret affair. An affair which she had no intention of ending and which she fully expected Ash to tolerate and their marriage to cover. It was the way of such things she had told him with a dismissive shrug.

It was the anger he had felt when she had revealed the truth to him that had destroyed not just his physical desire for her but, and far more hard for him to bear, his duty to feel any desire to love her. He had thought that sense of duty so strong and so much an intrinsic part of himself. He had taken pride in it and yet with a handful of words Nasreen had shown him its pitiful weakness. His heart had chilled to her. He hadn’t been able to forgive either her or himself for what his reaction to her had shown him about himself.

He had, in effect, turned his back on her, giving in to his own pride and his own feelings about the destruction of his plans for their lives together. And because of that she had died. If he had thought less about the pride he had taken in telling himself that he would love her because it was his duty to do so and instead set his personal standards lower, they could possibly have worked something out—a discreet arrangement of a marriage in which they produced an heir but privately went their own ways. If he had tried harder, been more realistic, maybe they could have salvaged something and then perhaps she would not have died. Instead, he had allowed his emotions to take control.

He deserved the burden of guilt he had to carry. It was his punishment for the pride he had taken in believing that he could create love, not just within Nasreen but within himself, when that power did not belong to him. He had no right to take pleasure in the response that Sophia had given him, and even less to feel that primitive surge of male possessive pleasure to know that he was the one to have brought her to what had obviously been her first experience of the intensity of her own capacity for sensual pleasure.

He could not allow himself to savour that achievement. Instead, he must punish himself for even allowing himself to think of it. And as for his own pleasure? The result of too much abstinence. Nothing more. He could not permit himself to feel anything more.

The darkly bitter emotions that burned inside him turned outwards seeking an escape. He looked to where Sophia lay on the bed, her gaze still awed, her body still sensually satisfied and soft with the aftermath of her climax.

If he went to her now, held her now, kept her close to him and told her of all the many ways in which their coming together had been so very different from anything he had known before, if he told her that she was different from any other woman he had known before … He was already turning towards her, already … Already what? Prepared to break a vow he knew he had to keep if he was to ensure that this marriage worked for the good of his people.

From somewhere he found the will to turn the weakness within him that he didn’t want into the anger he needed. Like Nasreen, Sophia, too, had deceived him, leaving him to discover a truth that vitally affected their marriage on their wedding night—even if his discovery that she had been a virgin was the complete opposite of Nasreen’s revelations to him. And he was grateful to have that reason to feed his anger because he was afraid that without it he might be in danger of giving in to those feelings he had already had to fight back once. Feelings of tenderness and care, feelings that … Feelings that meant nothing, were nothing, and which he would stifle and destroy, because that was the way it had to be.

Without looking at Sophia he told her coldly, ‘I want an explanation.’

The abrupt coldness of Ash’s voice and demeanour after the sweet hot pleasure of the sensuality they had just shared shocked Sophia back to reality.

What had happened to her? How and why had she reacted to him in the way that she had, given everything she had believed she knew about herself and her desires for her own emotional future? It didn’t make sense that she should have wanted Ash so immediately, so passionately and so intensely, that it seemed as though her body had been waiting for this and for him. At least, it didn’t make sense, of course, unless that was exactly what had happened, and why she had responded to him the way she had. A cold chill of fear trickled down her spine. That was not true. It couldn’t be true. She refused to let it be true. So why had it happened?

She didn’t know. All she could think, all she could allow herself to believe, was that there had been a moment—a handful of several long delicately spun-out golden moments—during which she had felt as though she had touched heaven and held a rainbow of unimaginable delight in her hands. But that had not been reality. That had been a mirage, an imaginary fantasy, that could not and did not exist, and the last dying echoes of the foolish dreams she had once had.

It meant nothing, and for her pride’s sake, for the sake of the future, she must now learn to forget about it.

‘For my virginity?’ she responded in as cool a voice as she could manage. She must not allow herself, never mind Ash, to feel that their coming together had touched her emotions, because it hadn’t. As she had just analysed, for herself that reaction had simply been a long-ago echo of something that no longer existed.

‘Yes, of course for your virginity.’

She still looked slightly dazed, her eyes huge and dark, her mouth flushed a deep rose pink, but for all the signs of her pleasured sensuality, there was also a vulnerability about her, as though she was in need of … Comfort? Tenderness? These were things he could not give her. White teeth snapping together, he pulled on his robe and went across to the table where the maid had left her a bottle of water in a bucket of ice. He removed and opened it, pouring two glasses, one of which he brought over to her. Water, most precious gift of all to those born into a desert race, because it was the gift of life.

Sophia willed her hand not to tremble as she took the glass Ash held out to her. The water slid coolly down her throat, both reviving her and giving her new strength. Ash watched as a drop of condensation on the glass fell onto her chest and ran down the valley between her breasts. He wanted to look away but somehow he couldn’t. He wanted, he discovered, to reach out and stop its descent with his finger and then lick it from her skin with his tongue. He wanted … He wanted nothing other than a marriage of duty and mutual respect through which he could dedicate himself to his people and his responsibility to them.

Sophia pulled the sheet up around her naked body. Ash turned away, an unfamiliar feeling slicing into his gut. She was rejecting him? Why should that bring him such an immediate and intense desire to go to her and hold her, to feel her responding to him again as she had done earlier instead of retreating from him? He didn’t know. But he felt as though he didn’t know anything any more, and for a man who liked being in control of his life that was intolerable.

He turned back to Sophia. The evidence of the intensity of what had happened between them was plain to see. It was there in the tousle of her dark hair, the flush on her cheeks and the sensual exhaustion in her eyes. She looked like a woman who had been made love to and whose body had shared enthusiastically in that experience. Or did he just see that because it was what he wanted to see?

‘It’s a bit too late for that now,’ he told her brusquely, gesturing to the sheet with which she had so modestly covered herself, ‘and I still want an explanation.’

‘It isn’t a crime to be a virgin, is it?’ Sophia shrugged as casually as she could. Despite everything, she recognised that a part of her, that part that still belonged to her sixteen-year-old self, wanted desperately to celebrate the ability of her body to give and receive pleasure, and to know that the wonderment and joy it had given her was shared by the man who had partnered her in it. But of course, to Ash what had happened between them was nothing special. How could it be? She knew that. The euphoria she had felt had gone and all that was left was the chilly reality of what she had lost—not her virginity, but her dreams and her hopes of being truly loved.

‘No,’ Ash agreed, ‘but you have to admit that when a woman goes to as much trouble as you have done to give the world the impression that you are sexually experienced and available, it is bound to raise the question of just why you did so.’ Sophia could hear the anger and the bitterness in Ash’s voice. ‘And I want an answer, Sophia.’

‘You already have that answer,’ she told him proudly. ‘I gave it to you when I told you that I wanted to marry for love. When you rejected me, Ash, I promised myself that I would only give myself to a man who loved me as much as I loved him. That is why I didn’t want my father forcing me into an arranged marriage. I wanted to find a man who would love me for myself, and as myself, not as the daughter of the King of Santina.’ Sophia paused. Just speaking like this was activating so many feelings she desperately wanted to deny. The temptation not to say any more was great, but something deeper and more demanding was driving her on as though seeking a form of catharsis for her.

‘When you reminded me of my responsibility for my actions, for boarding your plane, I realised that I would never reach that goal. But I still have no regrets that I made such a goal my priority. When you rejected me, Ash, when you told me that you didn’t want me because you loved your bride-to-be, I was so very envious of her that I promised myself one day I would meet someone who would love me like that and who I could love like that in return. I promised myself then that I would wait for that person. I promised myself that he would be my first and my only lover.’

Why was he allowing her words to cut so deeply into his conscience? The reality was that he had done the honourable thing in doing what she referred to as ‘rejecting’ her. To have taken her innocence would have been a gross abuse of her and of his own values, even if he had not already been committed to marriage to Nasreen. He had done the right thing, the only thing it had been possible for him to do. He had, in his arrogance, his blind belief that he could order his own emotions and those of Nasreen, given a naive sixteen-year-old the belief that if one waited long enough and believed hard enough that love must appear.

Wasn’t he already carrying a heavy enough burden of guilt? Did he have to force himself to carry even more? Was there never to be any peace for him, or any salvation? All he had done was try to emulate the happiness of his great-grandparents’ marriage.

A surge of something so intense that it physically hurt him to breathe seared through him—a sense of great loss and regret, sharpened with guilt.

Deliberately not looking into his face in case she gave away more than she wanted to, Sophia continued. ‘I knew, though, that if men knew I was a virgin they’d try to get me into bed, as some kind of challenge, so I decided that the best way to hold them at bay was to pretend that I had had loads of lovers. That was why I didn’t want my father to force me into a marriage without love.’

Ash had drained his own glass and had gone back to the table to pour himself a second one. Wrenched by guilt, he tried to defend himself to himself with a caustic, ‘And do you intend to continue looking for this once-in-a-lifetime love despite the fact that you are now married to me?’

Why was he doing this? Why did the thought of her turning to another man fill him with such a savagery of emotion that it ran like fire through his veins? Because of the disaster that had been his first marriage. Not because of any other reason.

‘No,’ Sophia denied.

Her voice was filled with so much calm conviction that Ash knew she meant what she was saying. She might claim that she wanted to reject her royal status and upbringing, but right now, no matter how much she herself might deny it should he tax her with it, she was every inch the royal princess bound by her own awareness of the demands placed on her to fulfil her birth role. It was impossible for him not to admit to the respect he felt for her.

Unaware of his thoughts Sophia confirmed her right to that respect when she told him firmly, ‘I’m not a child, Ash. When I agreed to marry you I knew what I was committing myself to. It’s called growing up. The reality is that I was wrong to think I could persuade my father not to force me into a marriage of which he approved. I recognised that when I heard what he said to you when you telephoned him, just as I also recognised that if I had to have a marriage that would please my father then I would rather it was to you than someone I don’t know. Those of us with royal blood aren’t always free to follow our own dreams. We have a duty to fulfil the role for which we ourselves were created by our own parents.

‘If my virginity disappointed you then I’m sorry, but I am as committed to this marriage and to my own fidelity to you within it as I would have been had our marriage been a love match.’ That was certainly true. ‘I never want any of my children to have to wonder if my husband is their father. Never.’

Ash closed his eyes. Just for a moment, listening to her, he had thought … felt … wanted … What? Nothing, he assured himself grimly. Nothing at all. Unable to trust himself to look at Sophia he picked up his robe and put it on before turning and walking away from her.

Ash had gone. She was on her own. And she wished that he was here with her. Wasn’t that natural after the intimacy they had just shared? The intimacy? Didn’t she mean the sex? Ash had made the lines that would govern their marriage clear enough to her and she had accepted them. Wallowing in self-pity now was as pointless as looking back at dreams that would only ever be just that.

So what was she going to do with the rest of her life? What was she going to hang her future on? What goals was she now going to set for herself?

It wasn’t her fault that she’d never been allowed a proper working role as part of the Santina royal family other than that of appearing at formal functions as ‘our youngest daughter.’ Given the chance, she’d have loved to have had an opportunity to get her teeth into a far more demanding role. She’d once persuaded her mother to allow her to visit a local school and what she’d seen there had filled her with enthusiasm for doing something to help the more needy in their own society, but her father had thoroughly disapproved of the idea. Now, as Ash’s maharani, she naturally had duties that went with that role. Could that be her salvation? Good works instead of love? Love came in many different forms, Sophia reminded herself firmly. Loving Ash’s people because they would now be her people and finding ways to help them would benefit her as much as it would hopefully benefit them. Even so, as she contemplated her future, a small shiver of sadness and loss ran across her heart.

In his own room Ash couldn’t sleep. The shock not just of discovering that Sophia was a virgin but also of her admission of what her private dreams had been was still sinking in. Now, when it was far too late, he berated himself angrily for not paying more attention to the instinct that had said to him over and over again that there was a vulnerability about her, despite everything he had thought he had known. Why hadn’t he thought more deeply about that? Asked more questions, listened to his instincts? Because he hadn’t wanted to. Because the demands on him of the past, and Nasreen, overshadowed the present. He had a duty never to forget Nasreen and the guilt he felt about her, didn’t he?

It was too late now to wish that he had taken the time to understand Sophia better. They were married, the marriage had been consummated and they both had no choice now other than to make the best of the situation. She had wanted to marry for love, she had said. Well, if she had mentioned that earlier he could have told her that sometimes marrying for love was the worst thing you could do, especially when the other person didn’t think of ‘love’ in the same terms that you did.

He slipped out of his robe and headed for his bed, not sure whether it had been the action of removing it that had brought to mind the way Sophia had looked at him when she had seen his naked body, but knowing that whatever had caused it he wished it hadn’t. Being reminded of that right now simply wasn’t something he could summon the strength to deal with.

What he’d discovered earlier about Sophia had turned everything he had thought he had known on its head. Lying sleepless in a bed that suddenly felt far too empty, he couldn’t hold on to the barriers he wanted to erect against his own emotions. Guilt, pain, a sense of overwhelming loss—he could feel them all.

Moonlight edging in through the unshuttered windows stroked across the faces and bodies of the two people who slept alone and separated. Sophia’s hand was on the pillow adjacent to her own as though in her sleep she was reaching for something—or someone. Ash’s dreams were vivid with unwanted memories unleashed to torment him. He was a bridegroom approaching his bride on their wedding night. Regret and guilt slowed his progress to where she stood waiting for him, her head bowed, her face veiled. With every step he took towards her the sense of doom filling him grew stronger, but somehow he forced himself to go on. When he reached her he took hold of her veil, pushing it back off her face as she lifted her head.

The sight of Sophia’s glowing face looking back him, her eyes warm with desire, her lips soft and parted, filled his heart with an intense relief and joy. He took hold of her, drawing her closer to him, his lips seeking hers as he murmured emotionally, ‘Sophia …’

Abruptly Ash woke up, the clarity of his dream still with him, his heart pounding and thudding into his chest wall. What was happening to him?

Nothing. Nothing. And to prove it he would stay away from Sophia’s bed until he knew he could take her in it without any shred of emotion threatening his hard-won resolve. This was a marriage of necessity, a marriage that would work because of the duty they both owed to it and to each other. It must not be prejudiced by emotion or by any desire with him that was prompted by any kind of emotion. Once they knew whether or not Sophia had conceived, that would be the time for him to return to her bed. And the ache within him that was burning so fiercely even now must be overcome, because to allow himself to want her was to allow himself to become vulnerable, and he could not permit that.