Читать книгу Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 17

CHAPTER TEN

‘WHAT HAPPENED TO that horse you idolised?’ Jaul asked lazily.

‘Hero’s in a sanctuary close to the farm where I used to live with Dad,’ Chrissie told him as they rode back to the oasis encampment with the sun slowly rising to chase the coolness from the sky. Her eyes were wide and bright, appreciative of the surprising and colourful beauty of the barren landscape at dawn. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen him in months. While I was working and looking after the twins, it was just impossible to get up there for a visit but maybe next time we’re in London I could make a special trip to see him.’

‘Why’s your horse in a sanctuary?’ Jaul pressed with obvious incomprehension.

‘Because, Mr Spoilt-Rotten-Rich, when my father had to vacate the farm tenancy I no longer had anywhere to house Hero and no money to pay for his upkeep either. Then, luckily for me, we sold the island to Cesare and I gave the sanctuary an endowment to give Hero a home for life,’ Chrissie explained without heat as she gently stroked the neck of the beautiful Arabian mare she was riding. ‘He’s safe, well-looked-after and happy. It was the best I could do for him.’

Their time in the desert was almost over, Chrissie reflected, for they were travelling back to the palace as soon as they returned to the camp. The palace stables were packed with wonderful horse flesh and Jaul had had his stallion and her gorgeous high-stepping mare brought out for their use. Every day they had gone riding at dawn and at dusk when the desert heat was at its coolest. She had adored those quiet times with Jaul and the knowledge that their mutual love of horses and fresh-air activity was something they could share. But although Jaul had been endlessly attentive and reassuring she could not escape the suspicion that something was amiss with him.

While Jaul had endured long meetings with the tribal sheikhs, who had arrived every morning to speak with him and stayed throughout the day, Chrissie had spent the time with their wives and families. She enjoyed meeting people and learning about their lives and with Zaliha to translate she had held story-telling sessions with the children and all formality had been abandoned while she entertained them. Jaul had called those sessions an ‘unqualified success’ and had complimented her on her easy manner with his people. He had even asked her to consider working with the professionals on a nursery education development programme for Marwan, pointing out this was her area of expertise. His request had filled her with pride and pleasure, yet in spite of his praise and satisfaction she remained convinced that there was something wrong between them.

There was a distance, a reserve in Jaul that had not been there before, and he had not made love to her since their wedding night. Of course, he had been forced to sit up late with his visitors, she acknowledged ruefully. He had come to bed in the early hours and had still risen at the crack of dawn as he always did. But since that first night, he hadn’t touched her at all, indeed had suddenly become very restrained in his behaviour in a way that was totally unfamiliar and confusing to Chrissie because Jaul was such a naturally physical person. Last night, for instance, she had shifted over to his side of the bed and he had lain there as rigid as an icicle being threatened by the heat of a fire. Chrissie had intended to make encouraging moves herself but the polite goodnight he had murmured had made her pull back from that idea.

Maybe, she thought anxiously, now that she was available all the time, as it were, she didn’t have quite the same appeal. Or more probably, common sense suggested gently, he was simply exhausted by early starts, late nights and the need for constant courteous diplomacy while he worked with the different factions involved in the talks that were lasting, on average, eighteen hours a day. The very last thing she should be doing with Jaul, she told herself urgently, was allowing her imagination or her insecurities to conjure up seeming problems in what was probably perfectly ordinary behaviour. Their marriage was working, wasn’t it? She thought it was working but the renewed closeness she had fancied she saw during their second wedding night seemed to have evaporated again.

When they arrived back at the palace, Bandar greeted them in the entrance porch to speak urgently to Jaul. Jaul pokered up and a flush mantled his exotic cheekbones, his response to his aide clipped and cool in tone.

‘What’s happened?’ Chrissie asked worriedly.

A tiny muscle pulled tight at the corner of Jaul’s unsmiling mouth. ‘My grandmother has arrived in Marwan and has asked to see me. She’s staying at an hotel in the city.’

‘My goodness, she must be quite an age now,’ Chrissie remarked.

‘I understand that she is travelling with her daughter, Rose. Obviously at some stage she remarried...my grandfather did not,’ Jaul could not resist reminding her.

‘I suppose, taking into account how he and your father felt about her, it would be an awkward and uncomfortable meeting for you but—’

Jaul froze and fell still.’ I have no intention of agreeing to a meeting with the ladies. I have instructed Bandar to send my apologies and an appropriate gift.’

Chrissie closed a dismayed hand over his arm and tugged him into one of the many cluttered reception rooms off the ground-floor hall of the palace. ‘You can’t mean that?’

Jaul frowned down at her, his stunning bone structure rigid. ‘Please try to understand, Chrissie. I have never heard any good of Lady Sophie, only that she is a terrible troublemaker and I have quite enough to deal with at the moment without encouraging that sort of personality into my life.’

Chrissie was disconcerted by the force and strength of his comprehensive rejection of his grandmother and his aunt and had to resist an urge to risk changing the subject by asking him what else he was struggling to deal with that was so onerous that he could not spare an elderly woman a fifteen-minute hearing even when she had come so far to see him.

‘You have to change your mind about this, Jaul.’

‘Although I have every respect for your opinion, I will stand firm on this,’ Jaul grated, temper licking along the edges of his roughened voice. ‘This is not your business.’

‘Lady Sophie is the twins’ great-grandmother and that makes her my business as well.’

Jaul shot her an impatient glittering golden glance and compressed his wide, shapely mouth as he took an impatient step closer to the door. ‘I refuse to discuss this any further. I have told you how I feel and why.’

‘I’ll go and see her in your stead.’

Jaul swung back lightning fast from the exit he had been making. ‘No, you will not. I forbid it.’

‘You forbid it?’ Chrissie repeated in an almost whispered undertone, wondering when and where her husband had developed the belief that he had the right to forbid her from doing anything.

‘Yes, I do,’ Jaul repeated grittily and he strode off.

Forbid away, my love, Chrissie thought ruefully, I’m afraid it won’t get you anywhere because it is no longer the sixteenth century when wives blindly obeyed husbandly dictates. As far as she was concerned, good manners alone demanded that Jaul meet with the two women when they had flown out to Marwan purely on his behalf. On the other hand she could quite understand his attitude when both his grandfather and his father had made his grandmother out to be such a horrible person. Before she could lose her nerve, however, she was determined to do what she believed was right and she asked Zaliha to track down Bandar and discover which hotel Jaul’s grandmother was staying in.

A couple of hours later, a well-dressed middle-aged woman introduced herself as Rose to Chrissie at the door of the hotel suite and thanked her warmly for coming in Jaul’s place. ‘As I said when you phoned, my mother is becoming increasingly frail and your willingness to meet her lifted her spirits.’

‘But I don’t know if I can do anything to break the family stalemate,’ Chrissie warned the older woman ruefully.

‘When my mother read about your marriage to Jaul in the newspaper, there was no stopping her,’ Rose confided. ‘She was convinced that her grandson’s marriage to a British woman would make a difference to her grandson’s attitude.’

A tiny old lady with a fluff of white hair and faded blue eyes sat in a high-backed armchair with a cane clasped between her gnarled hands. ‘I’m Sophie, your husband’s grandmother,’ she said simply.

Chrissie stretched out her hand. ‘I’m Chrissie.’

‘How much have you been told about me?’

‘The barest facts,’ Chrissie admitted. ‘Perhaps I should share my experience with Jaul’s family with you.’

Tea was served while Chrissie confided her own story, feeling that it was better to be honest and admit the difficulties she had had with Sophie’s late son, Lut.

At the end of Chrissie’s account, Sophie sighed. ‘It’s a sad thing to accept that even had I got to know my son as an adult I don’t think I would’ve liked him. Your husband’s grandfather Tarif twisted Lut against me. There was never any hope of my son listening to my side of the story. Indeed Lut accused me of being a liar but I am not a liar. I married Tarif when I was nineteen.’

‘You were only a teenager?’ Chrissie gasped, suddenly comprehending the outlandish décor of the London mansion. It had been furnished by a teenager working with an unlimited budget.

The old lady smiled. ‘Yes, but I considered myself to be very mature. What teenager does not? My family was very much against the marriage but I was head over heels in love and Tarif seemed so westernised and liberal. He swore that I would be his only wife and I believed that I had nothing else to worry about. Unfortunately, excellent English and European dress aren’t a sufficient guide to a man’s character.’

Chrissie simply listened.

‘I was already pregnant by the time we returned from our honeymoon to Marwan.’ Lady Sophie paused, her thoughts clearly back in the distant past. ‘That’s when everything changed. My husband suddenly became unavailable and we no longer shared a bedroom...’

‘Had you had an argument?’

‘No. I found out that my husband had a harem full of concubines.’

Chrissie’s eyes flew wide in shock. ‘Concubines?’

‘Tarif saw no reason why he should give up the lifestyle of his ancestors,’ the old lady told her quietly. ‘He could not understand why I could not accept his having other women because I was his wife and his queen and soon to deliver the royal heir. He considered my status the greatest honour and believed I should be content with it.’

‘Good grief,’ Chrissie mumbled with stricken sympathy, barely able to imagine the distress that nineteen-year-old girl must have endured when she found herself living alone and unsupported in such a situation. ‘What did you do?’

‘I begged him to give his other women up and he refused. He was a very stubborn man. For months we shared the same wing of the palace while living as strangers. I gave birth to Lut. Afterwards, Tarif urged me to accept him as he was. He argued that it was enough of a sacrifice that he had promised not to take another wife.’ Jaul’s grandmother pursed her lips. ‘Naturally I said no. A few weeks later my father died very suddenly and I flew home for the funeral. Tarif refused to let me take Lut with me. While I was away he phoned me and told me not to return to Marwan unless I had changed my mind about what I was willing to live with.’

‘Obviously you never had a choice,’ Chrissie commented quietly. ‘That was cruel.’

‘When I wouldn’t give way and return to Marwan on his terms, Tarif refused to let me see my son. I didn’t see Lut again until he was in his twenties and although he let me tell him my story, he wouldn’t accept it. Lut was an enormous prude. The very word concubine set him off in a rage and he harangued me, accusing me of telling foul lies to besmirch his father’s memory.’

Chrissie sighed. ‘I’ll discuss this with Jaul. He’s not remotely like his father.’

‘Are you absolutely sure of that?’ Lady Sophie prompted with a worried look on her face. ‘I can tell you that in terms of looks, Jaul is the living image of his grandfather and such sensitive issues as concubines are not discussed here where the King is omnipotent.’

Chrissie thanked her hostess for the tea before she departed with her thoughts in turmoil. She was convinced by the old lady’s story, she acknowledged uneasily. But how did she know for sure that there were no longer concubines in the vastness of the royal palace complex? Was it even possible that she herself should need to fear such a situation? Could Jaul have honed his superb talents in the bedroom with nameless women in some hidden, never-discussed harem? Could it even provide an explanation for his marked lack of interest in making love to his wife? Or was she being insane in nourishing such a fantastic suspicion?

The question that she was determined not to ask Jaul grew and grew on the drive back to the palace. How likely was it that Jaul kept concubines like his not so very westernised grandfather? In this day and age not very likely, her rational mind assured her as she mounted the stairs to their private wing and went straight to see the twins.

Thirty minutes later, she glanced up to see Jaul lodged in the doorway, stunning eyes dark as coal and steady in the taut lines of his lean, darkly handsome face as he studied her.

‘You know where I’ve been.’ Chrissie sighed as she scrambled upright to follow Jaul into the room next door.

‘You went against my wishes. Naturally I am annoyed,’ Jaul spelled out flatly, his perfect white teeth grinding together with the strain of suppressing his temper as he stared down at her.

Of course he didn’t want his wife connecting with a bitter old woman he had heard described as a fantasist! Of course he didn’t want his grandmother trying to poison Chrissie with her undying hatred of his family! Chrissie already had all too many reasons to think badly of him. Furthermore, with his long-awaited meeting with Yusuf due to take place that very afternoon, Jaul was ready to confront the last of the devils that had haunted him since his receipt of Yusuf’s note of apology, but quite understandably on edge at the prospect. Only when he was convinced that he knew everything could he talk honestly to Chrissie. There would be no more secrets between them, no unanswered questions or doubts. His wife deserved that from him at the very least.

‘I visited Sophie because I hoped that in some way...goodness knows how...I might be able to heal the family rift,’ Chrissie told him ruefully.

‘A compassionate thought,’ Jaul conceded grittily. ‘What did she tell you about my family?’

Chrissie breathed in deep, mustering her courage. ‘That your grandfather had concubines while he was married to her.’

Jaul looked at her in wonderment. ‘She told you...that? Seriously?’

Chagrined by his patent disbelief, Chrissie murmured quietly, ‘And I believed her.’

Jaul threw back his broad shoulders, his anger as instant and shattering as a sudden clap of thunder on a hot, humid day. ‘That’s a most offensive untruth...an outrageous calumny!’

‘Is it?’ Chrissie almost whispered because the atmosphere was so explosive it was as if all the oxygen were being sucked into a void. ‘Because, naturally, after being told that I have to ask you if you—’

‘Don’t you dare ask that of me!’ Jaul roared back at her, shocking her into sudden silence. Outright fury had charged his lean, hard-muscled frame. His dark eyes were blazing like golden arrows aimed at a target.

Chrissie had lost colour. She hadn’t even got the actual question voiced but he knew exactly what she had been about to ask him and he was outraged to a degree that went beyond anything she had ever seen in him before.

‘You have just proved my father’s contention that his mother was an appalling liar.’

‘If that is true, possibly he inherited that talent from his mother,’ Chrissie challenged without hesitation. ‘Your father was no great fan of the truth himself.’

Jaul paled beneath his bronzed skin and his hands closed into tight fists, for he could not defend his late father and he would not lie in his defence either. His father had been an irredeemable liar and in that moment he could quite understand why Chrissie had refused to accept Lut’s view of Lady Sophie and had preferred to make up her own mind.

‘There have not been concubines in the palace for over a century,’ Jaul informed her curtly. ‘To suggest that that lifestyle was still in existence in the nineteen thirties is incredible, but if it makes you feel any happier I will check those facts with Yusuf this afternoon. In Marwan, he is still the acknowledged authority on the history of the royal family. Indeed, he wrote a much-admired book on the subject.’

‘Don’t place your faith in the belief that your grandmother is lying,’ Chrissie urged ruefully, thinking that very occasionally her husband could be startlingly naive. ‘The book was probably a whitewash sanctioned and proofread by your father, Jaul. I bet there’s not a disrespectful, critical word in it.’

As the exact same thought had already occurred to Jaul, he swallowed hard, black lashes lowering over his lustrous golden eyes. ‘You are undoubtedly right but Yusuf will tell me the truth on all counts,’ he declared with assurance. ‘But nothing can ever eradicate the effect of my wife actually asking me if I too have kept concubines.’

Chrissie flushed a slow, painful pink. ‘I didn’t ask—’

‘But you were dying to ask,’ Jaul cut in drily. ‘Do you trust me so little still? Do you really believe that my people would accept a man leading a dissolute life on their throne? My country wants to be seen as modern and forward-thinking and our women have an increasingly strong voice in society. I must be seen to practise what I preach in public and in private...’

What Jaul said was common sense and Chrissie was mortified that for a few overwrought minutes after leaving his grandmother’s presence she had entertained such fantastic suspicions. Even more crucially she had not missed the flash of pain in his eyes that she could even think to ask him such a question. He was furious too but thankfully not in the same way as his late father. He didn’t suffer from uncontrollable rages and watched his tongue when he lost his temper but the downside of those positives was that he would be pretty much silent until he had mulled everything over in depth.

‘I’m sorry!’ Chrissie said loudly and abruptly as he began to turn away. ‘It was stupid...but just for a moment I felt I had to know for sure,’ she endeavoured to explain, struck to the heart by his condemnation but not sure she could blame him for it.

‘If you appreciated how prim and proper my father was you would never have felt that need,’ Jaul asserted with a wry curve of his sensual mouth. ‘He waged a war against immorality in every form inside and outside the palace. He was a repressive ruler. One of my first acts was to repeal the law restricting music and dancing in public places. If it makes you feel any happier about things, I will ask Yusuf to fill me in on what he knows about my father’s dealings with my grandmother.’

As Jaul left the room with the giving of that concession, Chrissie slumped down on a sofa. Maybe she shouldn’t have interfered by visiting Lady Sophie, she reasoned heavily. She had waded in blindly, seeing herself as doing something good and helpful but in actuality she had hurt and offended Jaul. His self-control in the face of the provocation she had offered could only embarrass her because she had controlled neither her imagination nor her tongue. In the circumstances Jaul had been very understanding and that shamed her the most. He was never going to love a woman stupid enough to ask him if he kept concubines, was he?

* * *

Jaul spent a couple of hours talking to his father’s former aide. Yusuf left, relieved to have cleared his conscience of the secrets he had kept throughout his working career. Jaul, however, was in a far less happy frame of mind. In point of fact, he was stunned, furious and bitter and as soon as the keys he had requested were brought to him he strode through the huge palace complex and down a flight of stairs in a far corner. A servant wrestled with the giant key and then Jaul waved his guards back and entered the building alone.

The sheer size of the place shook Jaul even more. He prowled through empty rooms and courtyards, studied fountains and bathing places. Everything was in very good condition and he marvelled that his father’s mania for historic conservation had triumphed over the older man’s desire to rewrite the past and bury the family’s murkier secrets. Rage was his overriding response to what he had learned from Yusuf until the point when he focused on the great bed placed on a dais. Slowly his dark, angry eyes widened as he finally registered the tenor of the murals swirling across the walls round the bed.

Utterly disconcerted, he froze, imagining his strait-laced father’s reaction to such artistic licence and something infinitely more surprising bubbled up inside Jaul without warning. Gales of incredulous laughter convulsed his lean, powerful frame and when he had recovered from his inappropriate amusement he lounged back breathless against the edge of the bed. His brilliant eyes flared to the purest gold when he pictured how Chrissie would react to the paintings.

* * *

A note was delivered to Chrissie minutes after she had emerged from a long relaxing bath. Instantly recognising Jaul’s copperplate black print, she tore it open.

You are cordially invited to spend a night in the harem with your husband.

A surprised giggle fell from her lips while a warm sense of relief swelled inside her. Jaul had recovered sufficiently from his annoyance with her to make a joke. It was a joke, of course it was, and Jaul had always had a terrific sense of humour. She leafed through drawers and selected her fanciest lingerie with hot cheeks before choosing a perfectly circumspect plain blue tailored dress, which gave not the smallest hint of what she wore underneath. A night in the harem? What did that entail? Her entire skin surface heated up and she smiled dreamily, knowing exactly what she was hoping that note meant while being wryly amused by her own secret conviction that there was something different about Jaul in recent days. Didn’t that note prove how mistaken she had been?

One of Jaul’s guards was waiting to take her to her husband and they trudged a long way down endless corridors and down stone flights of stairs before they reached their destination. A big, ugly, ironclad door faced them. Opening it for her, the guard stood back and Chrissie entered, wondering why the man was trying not to smile. But that question was quickly answered because a spectacular scene confronted her two steps beyond the door.

Candles were burning everywhere she looked, glowing in the dark to cast leaping shadows across the soaring domed ceiling and elaborate mosaic-tiled walls and ensuring that the water droplets cascading from the fountains sparkled like diamonds. It was beautiful, incredibly beautiful, and Chrissie knew instinctively that Jaul had done it for her. Her bright eyes stung painfully and she had to blink when the man himself appeared from behind a pillar about thirty feet from her. In contrast to their highly exotic surroundings Jaul sported faded jeans and a partially unbuttoned white shirt, the pale fabric accentuating his bronzed skin and the blackness of his unruly hair. For a split second she felt as though time itself had slipped for this was Jaul as she remembered him as a student, shorn of every atom of his forbidding reserve.

‘Where on earth are we?’ Chrissie asked.

‘In the heart of the al-Zahid family’s shadiest secret,’ Jaul proffered wryly. ‘The harem that even I didn’t know still existed until this evening. Of course, I knew there would have been one at some stage but, taking into account my father’s delicate sensibilities, I assumed it was long gone.’

Chrissie gazed past him at the giant bed. ‘That looks like a bed people would throw an orgy on,’ she said before she could think better of it. ‘Not that I know anything about...er...orgies—’

‘Look at the walls,’ Jaul invited.

In the flickering shadows she saw the murals and the naked male and female figures engaged in flagrant sexual play and a hot flush lit her cheeks. ‘My goodness...’

‘I’m amazed that my father didn’t have this place razed to the ground, but he idolised my grandfather.’ Jaul sighed. ‘How he retained that respectful attitude when confronted with the reality that Tarif was a man with licentious habits, I cannot begin to imagine.’

‘Nor can I,’ she whispered, beginning to understand why he had brought her to the harem. He had found out the truth and immediately acted with the open-minded candour she had always loved him for. When Jaul was in the wrong he never tried to cover it up or excuse himself.

‘I’ve phoned Sophie’s daughter, Rose, and apologised through her for taking so long to make an approach to my grandmother.’

‘You phoned Rose...already?’ Chrissie exclaimed.

‘There were concubines here well into the last century. My grandmother wasn’t lying,’ Jaul confirmed with a sardonic twist of his lips. ‘But I only learned the truth this afternoon from Yusuf. He knows all the family secrets and learning about how cruelly my grandmother was treated was only the first of several shocks I received after I questioned him.’

A frown dividing her brows, Chrissie made an instinctive move forward and rested her hand soothingly on his forearm, feeling the muscles that were pulled whipcord tight with fierce tension. ‘I’m sorry, Jaul.’

As if he found her touch unbearable, Jaul shifted back a defensive step. ‘For what are you sorry? That I was too much of a fool to appreciate that my father would say or do anything to wreck my marriage?’ he framed with unleashed bitterness. ‘Chrissie, I would’ve trusted him with my life! He was a difficult man and very controlling but in many of the ways that mattered he was a good father.’

Discomfited by his rejection of her sympathy, Chrissie stiffened. ‘And you loved him, of course you did. I loved my mother when I was a child even though I had a pretty miserable childhood. Parents don’t have to be perfect to be loved. But I still don’t understand why your father stayed so dead set against his own mother and me when he knew your grandfather was the one at fault.’

‘My father chose the easy way out. He was never going to admit the embarrassing truth. If he laid the blame of cultural differences at his mother’s door, he could continue to idolise his father and believe that he was right to protect me from all Western influences.’ Jaul’s brilliant dark eyes veiled. ‘Apparently he was afraid that I may have inherited Tarif’s fatal weakness for women. I was finally able to understand why I had to rebel against him to gain the right to study in the UK.’

Chrissie was listening closely. ‘You had to...rebel? You never told me that before.’

‘I was ashamed of it. I was raised to believe that a decent son always respects a parent’s greater maturity and wisdom,’ Jaul admitted grudgingly. ‘After the experience of a military boarding school followed by army life, I longed for the freedom to make my own choices.’

‘Of course you did,’ she whispered feelingly, newly aware of what a domineering old tyrant his late father had been. ‘And I respect you more for having taken a stand and it’s hardly surprising that you went a little wild when you first started university. I never appreciated how restricted your life had been before you came to the UK.’

Jaul studied her lovely face fixedly, the turquoise eyes soft with compassion. He was shaken that she was still trying to comfort him when he didn’t deserve comfort because he had let her down worst of all. ‘But that period of going wild almost cost me you,’ he pointed out. ‘It gave you the wrong impression.’

Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them back in desperation as she sat down on the flat tiled edge of a fountain. ‘There was no way I was going to resist you for ever...the attraction was too strong.’

‘I have never wanted any woman as much as I wanted you,’ Jaul admitted in a raw undertone and he bent over the tray stationed on a table by a pillar to fill a glass and extend it to her. ‘I have never loved any woman but you...’

At that statement, her hand shook a little as she accepted the glass, hastily sipping the cool sweetness of fruit juice. He had never loved anyone else, she was thinking, that surely had to be a point in her favour.

His lean, darkly handsome features were grim and taut with tension. In a restive, uncertain gesture he raked long, elegant fingers through his luxuriant hair, tousling it. ‘I loved you yet I let you down. You were alone and pregnant and I wasn’t with you. I accepted my father’s lies.’

Chrissie’s heart was thumping very hard. ‘Jaul—what’s brought all this on tonight?’

‘Yusuf was with my father when he visited you in Oxford. His conscience was uneasy and he was eager to clear it,’ Jaul recounted flatly. ‘I was appalled when Yusuf described what happened that day. It shames me that my father could have treated my wife in such a way and that I was unable to prevent it from happening.’

The backs of her eyes were gritty with tears because she was remembering what had been one of the worst days of her life. Confronted by King Lut, she had felt alone and helpless, not to mention devastated by her father-in-law’s complete rejection of her as his son’s wife. ‘You were in hospital,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘There was nothing you could have done.’

‘Yusuf told me the truth.’ Jaul was ashen below his dark skin, his brilliant eyes tortured as he gazed at her. ‘But let us be honest here—Yusuf told me truths which I should’ve accepted when you spoke them.’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie cut in to confirm without hesitation. ‘I have never lied to you...’ A split second of silence fell before she coloured and added, ‘Well, only once and I’ll sort that out later.’

‘I swallowed my father’s lies about you and in my bitterness and hurt I learned to distrust my every memory of you. When I came back to find you last month, I should have listened more, thought deeper.’

‘Naturally you trusted your father’s word when he told you that I’d taken the money and run.’

‘How was it natural?’ His tone derisive in emphasis, Jaul set down her glass with a definite crack. Dark eyes flaming gold, he studied her, nostrils flaring, beautiful stubborn mouth tight at the corners with strain. ‘You were my life. You were my wife. My first loyalty should always have been to you. Will you please stop trying to make excuses for my failure to support you when you most needed me?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘I let you down in every way possible—’

‘Your father did this to us. He separated us, lied to us both and hurt us both,’ Chrissie responded shakily. ‘Put the blame where it belongs, Jaul. You were in a coma and then you had surgery and were struggling to recuperate. You weren’t in any condition to fight my corner or yours. When your father lied to you then, you were very vulnerable—’

‘I’m trying to say sorry, trying to grovel but you won’t let me,’ Jaul muttered unevenly, his eyes suspiciously bright.

‘I don’t want you grovelling. I don’t want your guilt—’

‘This is not guilt, this is...shame,’ he labelled roughly. ‘You are my wife and I let you down and I don’t want to lose you. There’s nothing I won’t do or say to keep you as my wife!’

Recognising his increasingly emotional frame of mind, Chrissie almost smiled. ‘Oh, I think I worked that out straight after that pre-nuptial agreement was stuffed beneath my nose when I looked as though I might be ready to walk away from you,’ she confided.

‘It was an empty threat,’ Jaul confessed grittily. ‘A pre-nup has no standing as yet in a British court of law. In addition you signed it without the benefit of independent legal advice and you were very young at the time. I knew that the pre-nup wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.’

It was Chrissie’s turn to be taken aback. As she had listened her eyes had widened and her soft mouth had hardened. ‘I should’ve called your bluff. But maybe I didn’t fight more because I didn’t want to. Has that occurred to you?’

His lush black lashes swept up and down over his frowning eyes. ‘But why would you have behaved that way?’

Chrissie stiffened, reluctant to give him the words of love that were as effective as chains in binding her to both him and the twins. He knew the truth now about his father, her pride and her sense of justice finally satisfied. He knew what she had endured and he knew that she had not accepted a financial settlement in lieu of their supposedly invalid marriage. Keen to change the subject of why she was being so tolerant of his stubborn misjudgements, she said with forced lightness of tone, ‘Who on earth lit all these candles?’

‘Zaliha supplied the candles and the snacks. I lit them. The fountains have been kept in good working order and only had to be switched on. I couldn’t allow any other female staff in here because they would have been very much shocked by the murals.’

Chrissie scanned the hundreds of candles and hid a smile, touched by the effort he had made on her behalf. ‘The murals may be shocking but this place is beautiful all lit up like this.’

The beginnings of the smile that had relaxed her full pink mouth filled Jaul with a craving for the softness of her, the warmth and the strength that ran like a core of inner steel through her seemingly fragile body. He had never appreciated how strong she truly was until he’d learnt what she had had to withstand at his father’s hands. His lean brown hands snapped into fists, anger stirring afresh because he had been incapable of protecting her. The guilt, which he was struggling to master, felt insurmountable.

‘I should’ve contacted you as soon as I was mobile again,’ he stated with savage regret, the hard, sculpted planes of his darkly handsome face stark with strain in the flickering light. ‘But I couldn’t face seeing you again knowing that I had lost you... It is hard for me to admit that but it is, at least, the truth of my feelings back then. Seeing you again, being in your presence when you were no longer mine, would have hurt too much.’

‘It still mattered that much to you?’ Chrissie pressed in surprise.

Jaul shot her an incredulous look. ‘I loved you. I loved you with all my heart! But I lost faith in you while I lay alone in hospital.’

Pained regret slivered through Chrissie. She was furious that his father had subjected him to that ordeal of believing that she no longer cared about him. I loved you with all my heart. It hurt Chrissie to hear that. ‘I would’ve been there with you if I’d known—’

‘I know that now...that’s what killing me!’ he bit out, swinging defensively away from her, broad shoulders bunched with tension below his thin shirt.

‘But it’s pointless wasting all this energy on a past that’s gone, done and dusted,’ she declared, tilting her chin. ‘We have to move on from it—’

‘How can I do that when my father’s lies cost us so much?’ Jaul framed emotively, turning back to her. ‘Once you were mine, completely, utterly mine and it is my dream that some day you will feel like that again. But, sensible and fair as I have tried to be, I still find myself thinking wholly unjust thoughts about the fact that—’ His hands fisted again and he turned away again. ‘No, I won’t say it...such jealousy and possessiveness are wrong!’

Chrissie was frowning. ‘What the heck are you talking about?’ she prompted uncertainly.

‘It is a topic better not discussed. What has happened has happened and we will not allow it to spoil what we do have,’ Jaul declared, still restively pacing the tiled floor.

Jealousy? Possessiveness? Abruptly she grasped his meaning and she reddened, cheeks heating fierily. ‘Are you talking about the fact that I said I was with other men while we were apart?’

His lustrous gaze narrowed. ‘It’s not something we need to discuss,’ he told her hastily. ‘You believed you were single and quite naturally...’

‘Well, maybe it would’ve been natural but I didn’t sleep with anyone else,’ Chrissie told him in a rush. ‘I said I did but it was a lie. I don’t know how you thought I could have found the time for another man when I was pregnant most of the first year you were gone and saddled with two newborns and working the second year.’

Jaul was studying her with fixed attention. ‘You...lied?’ he queried in disbelief. ‘About such an important issue?’

Chrissie winced. ‘It was a weapon and I used it. It’s the one and only lie I have told you. Obviously I assumed that you—’

Jaul stalked closer and gripped her forearms to hold her still. ‘No. No concubines, no girlfriends, no one-night stands. Nothing...zilch.’

Her eyes opened very wide in surprise. ‘But...er, why?’

‘When I finally got out of that wheelchair I decided that since I had got myself in such a mess with you it would be safer to avoid another liaison and instead get married.’

The tension in Chrissie’s slight shoulders relaxed and then reached full strength again because, while she was relieved he had not had any other women and his clear gaze convinced her that the once bitten, twice shy adage had worked a blinder on him, she still wanted to know who he had planned to marry. ‘So, who was picked to replace me?’

Jaul flushed. ‘I didn’t have anyone picked but I knew my people were waiting for me to do the picking.’ He brushed a gentle finger beneath her down-curved chin to raise it. ‘In truth, Chrissie, I have never cared for any woman the way I care for you. I don’t deserve you but you have always owned my heart—from the first moment to the last moment. I was depressed for a long time after I believed I had lost you and I was afraid of ever feeling for another woman what I felt for you.’

She lifted her hands to frame his proud cheekbones with tender fingers, emotion bright in her eyes as she gazed up into the scorching heat of his. ‘And I’m afraid that I’m always going to love you,’ she told him ruefully. ‘When you first came back I honestly did think I hated you but I never did get over losing you either.’

‘Chrissie—’

‘Shush,’ she hushed him tenderly. ‘Nobody else compared, nobody else can make me feel what you do and I do believe that you love me too.’

‘I do. I love you very deeply, habibti.’ Jaul planted a kiss against her caressing fingers, his black lashes low over golden eyes shimmering with a happiness Chrissie could not mistake. ‘The day I threatened you with the pre-nup was the day I understood that I still loved you because I have never done anything so dishonest in my whole life. And I wasn’t even ashamed. There was literally nothing I wouldn’t do to get a second chance with you and our children.’

Chrissie wrapped her arms round his neck. ‘Ruthlessness in pursuit of the right goal is acceptable.’

All her tension evaporated while he held her close and heat of a different ilk warmed at her feminine core.

‘But...who is to say...what the right goal is?’ Jaul quipped, running down the zip on her dress to ease it off her shoulders.

As the dress dropped to her feet, exposing the frilly silky lingerie he loved to see her in, he made a sound of appreciation low in his throat and carried her over to the orgy-sized bed to settle her down on the white linen sheet.

‘My only goal,’ he proffered softly, ‘is to keep you as my wife and the mother of my children for ever and make you so happy that you eventually forget our separation.’

Chrissie plucked at his collar. ‘I think that’s a terrific motivation,’ she told him sassily, her bright eyes dancing as he ripped off his shirt with more haste than cool. ‘Particularly since you’ve been so very separate from me in bed this past week...and I haven’t been at all happy.’

Jaul dealt her a troubled glance. ‘I burned for you but once I received Yusuf’s note...’

‘What note?’

Jaul explained the note. ‘And in the same moment I read it I knew I had got everything wrong with you. I couldn’t afford to take anything for granted.’

His wife ran worshipping fingers idly along the rippling muscles of his abdomen. ‘I thought you’d lost interest.’

‘You must be joking!’ Jaul exclaimed, rolling her back to come down over her, his taut lower body hard with an arousal she could feel. ‘I always want you. I just knew I didn’t deserve you.’

Chrissie ran an appreciative hand down over a lean, powerful thigh. ‘Love makes people more forgiving and I love you an awful lot.’

His kiss was hot, hungry and wildly exciting and her heart pounded and her pulses raced. Happiness was spinning and dancing inside her like a sudden burst of golden sunshine.

‘And I love you,’ he confessed with a flashing grin that tugged at her heart because the twins so strongly resembled him. ‘I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone and I always will.’

* * *

Three years after that incredibly romantic reconciliation in the former harem, Chrissie watched the twins squabble over a ride-on plastic car they were playing with in a shaded courtyard. At four years old, Tarif and Soraya were lively and opinionated and in need of firm handling from both their parents. Rising, Chrissie uttered a sharp word to break up the quarrel, threatening to remove the car entirely if the children refused to share it peaceably. It was interesting to sit back down again and watch her children negotiate a compromise.

Lizzie phoned while Chrissie was savouring peppermint tea served with tiny cakes. Smoothing the barely visible bump that thickened her figure, she thought how grateful she was that her morning sickness had not lasted into her second trimester. Indeed her second pregnancy was progressing much more smoothly than her first and she put that down to the lack of stress in her current life. She chatted at length to her sister, who was due to arrive with her family and their father for a visit at the end of the week. Her family were regular visitors and distance had not driven a wedge between the sisters.

When their nanny reclaimed the twins for an early evening meal, Chrissie wandered down to the stables to visit Hero. Two years earlier, her elderly pony had arrived to take up residence in the ritziest stall in the royal block. Their reunion had been a wonderful surprise for Chrissie and she had been overwhelmed that Jaul, incredibly busy as he was, had taken the time and trouble to ensure that Hero could live out what remained of his days near his mistress in Marwan.

Having become heavily involved in the development of the nursery education programme, Chrissie had found her first year in Marwan had raced past her. Jaul’s people were friendly and supportive and although she sometimes attended formal occasions with Jaul, rubbing shoulders with diplomats, foreign dignitaries and businessmen, for much of the time she was simply Jaul’s wife. Family life and time to spend with the children were immensely important to both of them.

Having visited Hero, Chrissie headed back to their private wing to shower and change. Every year they celebrated that night the barriers between them had finally dropped and they spent the night in the harem. That was where they had rediscovered their love and happiness and it was a wonderful way of remembering how they had started out and keeping faith with the promises they had exchanged.

Dusk was falling when Jaul began lighting candles and a meal was being set out below the pillars. The murals were covered by discreet curtains, ensuring that no staff member could be shocked or offended by those depictions of earthly lust and love. Jaul liked to think that love must have featured in some of the relationships that had taken place in the harem but he could not begin to imagine how his grandfather Tarif had chosen shallow physical relationships over the far deeper and more lasting bonds he could have formed with the wife who had loved him.

Jaul frowned as he thought of his grandmother, regretting that their time together had been so short. Lady Sophie had died peacefully in her sleep the year before. Prior to that, Jaul had made frequent visits to the old lady’s home in London, keen to make up as best he could for the decades his late father had spent ignoring his mother’s very existence.

The iron ring on the huge outer door was smartly rapped and rapped a second time when he was only halfway down the room to answer it. Jaul grinned, well acquainted with his wife’s impatience.

‘I haven’t quite finished the candles,’ he warned her.

‘I’m here to help.’ Chrissie looked up into his stunning dark golden eyes and could have sworn that her knees wobbled.

‘No, you’re pregnant. You’re not allowed to do anything but put your feet up.’ Jaul ushered her over to an armchair furnished with a footstool.

‘Anything?’ Chrissie teased as she kicked off her shoes and sat down.

‘Conserve your energy for what’s really important.’ Glancing wickedly at the bed awaiting them with his eyes alight with amusement, Jaul knelt down beside her to reach for her hand and slide a platinum ring adorned with a glowing sapphire onto her middle finger. ‘Thank you for another wonderful year.’

Chrissie studied her latest gift in consternation. ‘We agreed that you weren’t going to buy me any more jewellery.’

‘I didn’t agree. I simply chose silence over argument.’

‘Sometimes you can be so devious.’ Chrissie lifted a hand to brush an errant lock of blue-black hair off his brow.

‘And you love it,’ Jaul told her with assurance, planting a kiss on the delicate skin of her inner wrist while tracing tender fingertips over the slight swell of her pregnant tummy. ‘You wear everything you feel on the surface but I hide it...except when I’m with you. I love you, habibti.’

‘I know.’ And Chrissie gloried in that sense of security, standing up to enable him to band his arms around her and claim her mouth with the hunger that neither of them ever tried to hide or suppress.

‘I’m so excited about the baby,’ he confided. ‘I missed so much with the twins. This time around I will treasure every moment with you.’

‘I bet you embarrass me by fainting or something,’ Chrissie forecast, surveying him with loving intensity as the dancing light and shadow of the candles played over his lean, strong face.

But Jaul won that bet. He was fully conscious for the birth of his second son, Prince Hafiz, a healthy seven-pound baby with his mother’s astonishingly blue eyes. There was a hint of his English grandfather in his bone structure. His elder brother gave him a teddy and Soraya gave him a picture she had drawn. In the first official photographs, with Hafiz’s parents holding him safe in their arms, happiness and contentment radiated from the entire royal family.

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from THE SINS OF SEBASTIAN REY-DEFOE by Kim Lawrence