Читать книгу The Santina Crown Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 40

HASSAN shut the door of the studio behind him and began to walk down the wide marble corridor towards the nursery suite. His heart was heavy but he knew he could not put off this moment any longer. It was time to accept and face up to the truth.

He’d been waiting for the right moment. For Ella to properly recover from the birth. For the doctors to give both mother and daughter the thumbs-up. And for this terrible sense of remorse to leave him.

Yet it wouldn’t leave him. It clung to him like glue. Deep down he knew there was only one thing which would make him feel better—ironically, the very thing which would bring his world crashing down about him.

He found Ella standing by the window in the main salon, looking out onto one of the smaller fountains where a plume of water formed a graceful curve. Barefooted beneath her cream silk robe, her hair was hanging loose down her back and she turned round when she heard him enter. Her blue eyes were as bright as usual but he saw darkness in their depths, as if she, too, had recognised that the moment of truth was here.

‘Your father has been on the phone,’ he said heavily.

‘Oh? What did he say?’

He saw the faint lines crisscrossing her pale brow and realised that she must have lived much of her life like this. On a kind of knife edge, never knowing what her father was going to do or say next. His mouth hardened. And hadn’t it been exactly the same when she’d met him? Hadn’t he brought that same element of uncertainty into her life? He wondered why he had never seen that before, but the answer came to him almost immediately. He’d never seen it because he’d never allowed himself to see it.

‘He wants to know whether we are planning to go to Alex and Allegra’s wedding.’

She looked at him. ‘And what did you tell him?’

‘I said that we hadn’t decided. Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it, Ella? We haven’t decided so many things, and I don’t think attending your sister’s wedding is top of the list of things we need to resolve.’

Ella nodded, but his words made her heart plummet. She knew they couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable, yet she was afraid to face up to it. Afraid of what lay ahead—of a cold and empty future without her husband by her side.

Hadn’t she hoped that they could just forget the past and move on? Capitalise on the love—yes, love—which had pulsed through the air between them after their baby had been born. That moment of pure and unfettered joy when their eyes had met and they had silently acknowledged the new life they had created.

She looked at Hassan now, wondering whether they should postpone any decisions for a few days longer. He still looked slightly shell-shocked, even though it had been a week since they had returned from the desert. The longest seven days of her life, and easily the most eventful.

They’d been dazed and disorientated as they had entered the celebrating city of Samaltyn, cradling their newborn daughter with pride. They’d called her Rihana because they both liked the name, and when Ella had discovered it meant ‘sweet herb,’ that had clinched it. Because hadn’t Hassan been making sweet, herbal tea when she’d gone into labour? For a while she’d been on such a high of hormones and emotion that it was all too easy to pretend they were like any normal couple who’d just had a baby.

But now the intensely intimate memories of the birth had started to fade, leaving a couple who had resolved nothing. Who had begun to eye each other warily, as if each waiting for the other to make a move. She found herself wishing that she was back in that simple Bedouin tent again, where she had felt so incredibly close to Hassan. But she couldn’t keep getting herself into medical emergencies just to get him to show some feelings, could she?

‘You said you wanted to go home,’ Hassan said roughly, his words breaking into her thoughts and sounding almost like an accusation. ‘Have you thought any more about that?’

Ella winced as his stark words brought reality crashing in. During the ecstatic days following Rihana’s birth, it had been all too easy to forget about her insecurities, but Hassan’s question brought it into such sharp focus that she could no longer ignore it. Her insecurity was all bound up in her marriage, she realised, in her relationship with him. And nothing had changed.

Yes, during those heightened and unbelievable moments in the desert, she’d felt as close to him as she’d imagined it was possible for a man and woman to feel. When the helicopter had landed and the obstetricians had rushed in and taken over, before leaving the two—no, three—of them alone again for a few minutes, it had seemed a very precious time indeed.

Their eyes had met over the dark head of the baby who had latched so eagerly onto her breast and she thought she’d read something other than dazed pride in Hassan’s expression. She’d clung to the hope that he might now want to forge a new and closer future. A future for all of them.

But all those hopes had evaporated by the time they returned to the palace, where it seemed that normal procedure was to be renewed almost immediately. Hassan had done what he did best and occupied himself with the practicalities. Making sure that she had the best after-care. Issuing statements to the world media and declining to the give them the full and dramatic story of Rihana’s birth. Filling the nursery with a department-store quota of soft, fluffy toys.

Yet the subsequently smooth transition from pregnant queen to new mother seemed to have left Ella feeling just as displaced as before. And nothing would ever change so long as she was with Hassan, she realised. Why would it, when he didn’t seem to want anything more than this?

Now she focused on his words and realised that it was worse than she’d thought. That he actively wanted her to go.

‘I’d thought I’d wait—’

‘For what, Ella?’ he interrupted bitterly. ‘For me to bond even more with Rihana so that I’ll find it unbearable when you take her away from me?’

‘You want me to go,’ she stated dully.

Hassan flinched. Was she determined to twist the knife, to make this even more painful than it already was? And could he really blame her, if that was the case, for surely he deserved everything she chose to heap upon his head?

‘I can’t see any alternative.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Surely you can’t wait to get away from a man who forced you to come here even though you wanted to stay in London. A man who doesn’t have a heart, nor any compassion. Because I now have looked at myself through your eyes, Ella, and I do not like what I see.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she whispered.

He shook his head as the memory swam into his mind, like dark, distorting smoke. ‘That portrait!’ he grated. ‘I have just been into the studio and seen the man that you have painted. A ravaged man—’

‘Hassan—’

‘Isn’t there some novel where the man agrees a trade-off with the devil for eternal youth?’ he demanded. ‘And meanwhile there’s a portrait in the attic which shows the growing darkness inside him?’

‘It’s called The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ she said automatically.

‘Well, the darkness is right there on that canvas you’ve done of me, only I haven’t even had the eternal youth in exchange,’ he said bitterly, until he realised that wasn’t quite true. Because in a way, every man who ever had a child was given the gift of eternal youth. Only he would never see the daily miracle of his daughter’s developing life. He would be resigned to meeting her on high days and holidays, their precious time eaten into by the initial adjustment of having to reacquaint themselves every time they met. He would grow older never really knowing his child, and he would have no one to blame but himself.

Ella stared at him. ‘What are you trying to say, Hassan?’

He knew that he had to tell her. Everything. Every damned thing. She had to know the terrible lengths to which he had been prepared to go—and that would be the end of their marriage, once and for all.

‘Do you want to know the real reason why I was so insistent you came out to Kashamak when I discovered you were pregnant?’ he demanded.

She remembered the way he had expressed it at the time—as concern for her morning sickness and the need for someone to look after her. But she hadn’t been naive enough to think they were the real reasons. ‘It was about control, wasn’t it? About making sure that I conducted the pregnancy in a way you approved of.’

‘Yes, it was. But deep down, it was even more manipulative than that,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d have trouble adjusting, you see. That motherhood would cramp your style.’

‘Cramp my style?’ she repeated blankly.

‘That was when I was still labouring under the illusion that you were a good-time girl. A social butterfly. I thought you’d hate your life here and you’d want to be free again. And that’s what I wanted too.’

Ella saw the muscle which was working frantically at his cheek and the expression in his black eyes. But for once, they were not empty. Instead they were filled with the most terrible look of bleakness she had ever seen. Even worse than the time he’d told her about his mother.

‘You wanted me to leave?’ she guessed slowly. ‘And to leave the baby behind, with you?’

He winced, but he did not look away from her. The truth was painful but he could not deny it—and didn’t he deserve this pain? Didn’t he deserve all the recriminations she chose to hurl at his head? ‘Yes.’

‘To bring her up as your father once did, without a mother?’

‘Yes.’ He shook his head, as if he was coming out of a deep sleep. ‘It’s only been during the past few weeks that I realised I couldn’t possibly go through with it. That I couldn’t inflict on my own child what I had suffered myself. But for a while, the intention was there.’ He met the question which blazed from her eyes. ‘How you must hate me, Ella.’

For a second she thought that perhaps it would be easier if she did, because the man who stood before her was the most complex individual she’d ever met. And didn’t she suspect that the dark and complicated side of him wanted her to hate him? That it would be easier for him if she did, if she pushed him away and thus reinforced all his prejudices against women.

But Ella realised that nobody had ever been there for Hassan, not emotionally. After his mother had left, he’d never let anyone get close enough to try, and she wondered if she had the courage to do that. To risk being rejected by him all over again.

Yet what choice did she have? To live a life blighted by regret because she hadn’t had the guts to put her pride aside and reach out for a man who badly needed love. Her love—and their daughter’s love. Couldn’t she and Rihana help his damaged heart to heal?

‘I don’t hate you, Hassan,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I love you. Even though you didn’t want me to love you. And even though you did your best to make me turn my heart against you. I have to tell you that it hasn’t worked. And that if you were to ask me to stay here, with Rihana, and to be a proper wife in every sense of the word, then I would do it in a heartbeat. But I will only do it on one condition.’

Her soft and powerful words had momentarily stilled him, but now he stirred because conditions were familiar territory to him. His eyes were wary as they looked at her. ‘Which is?’

She swallowed. ‘I need to know that you care for me in some small way. That there’s a small seed of affection in your heart which maybe we can nurture and grow. And that you will nurture it, because while I’ve grown rather fond of the sand which surrounds us, I can’t live my life in an emotional desert.’

For long, silent seconds he stared at her, recognising the courage it had taken to lay open her feelings like that. How she humbled him with her courage! His eyes began blinking rapidly and when eventually he could bring himself to speak, his voice sounded strangely hoarse to his ears—the way it had done when he’d had his tonsils removed as a boy. ‘Not a seed,’ he said brokenly.

‘Not a seed?’ she repeated in confusion.

He shook his head. ‘Not a seed, no, but an eager young plant in its first rapid flush of life. For that is the strength of my “affection” for you, Ella!’ A rush of emotion surged through his veins as he reached out and pulled her in his arms. ‘But I do not know it by such a mediocre word as affection, because for days now I have been realising that it is called something else. Something I have never known before, nor dared to acknowledge.’

‘Could you perhaps try acknowledging it now?’ she suggested gently, knowing instantly what he meant because she could see it written all over his face. But she needed badly to hear it. She had bared her heart to him and now Hassan needed to redress the balance. To be her equal in every way there was.

He took both her hands in his. ‘Ella, I … love you. You hear how my voice falters on these words, but that does not mean you should doubt them. With all my heart and body and mind, I love you. You are everything a woman should be and I do not know why a generous fate should have brought you into my life. You have offered me your heart when I do not deserve—’

‘No!’ Her fierce word cut him short but her hands were trembling as she reached up to cup his dark and beloved face between her palms. ‘You didn’t deserve the childhood you had and maybe I didn’t either. But I think it’s time we had some lovely things in our life together, and they are right here at our fingertips. We can reach out and take them any time we want, starting right now. Not palaces or privileges or some flashy lifestyle with stuff, but you, me and Rihana.’

‘And our marriage will not fail,’ he declared softly.

‘No, it won’t—because we won’t let it fail,’ she agreed shakily. ‘We will learn from all the mistakes our parents made and we will give Rihana the kind of childhood that neither of us knew.’

His lips were passionate as he claimed hers in a kiss far deeper than any kiss he’d ever known. It was about more than passion and maybe about even more than love. It was about understanding and forgiving. About commitment and sharing. About making a happy home for the little girl who lay sleeping in her crib.

Bobby Jackson had christened his daughter Cinderella because he’d wanted her to marry a prince and somehow his rather ambitious dream had come true.

But Ella and Hassan had very different aspirations for their little girl, and that was why Rihana’s middle name was Hope.