Читать книгу An Arabian Marriage - Lynne Graham - Страница 7

‘IT IS a matter of family honour…’King Zafir’s voice was thin and weak but fierce longing burned in his gaze as he addressed his only surviving son. ‘You will bring your brother Adil’s son home to us and we will raise him to adulthood.’

Crown Prince Jaspar murmured tautly, ‘Father, with all due respect, the child has a mother—’

‘A harlot unfit to be called a mother!’ In a sudden explosion of anger, King Zafir raised himself from the pillows and thundered, ‘A shameless creature who danced until dawn while her child fought for his life in hospital! A greedy, grasping Jezebel…’ At that point a choking bout of serious coughing overcame the irate older man and he struggled in vain to catch his breath.

Instantly, the King’s medical team was rushed in to administer oxygen. Pale and taut, dark eyes intent, already stunned by the furious outburst that had brought on the attack, Jaspar watched the physicians go about their work and willed his parent to recover. ‘Please, Your Royal Highness,’ his father’s closest aide, Rashad, begged with tears in his strained eyes. ‘Please agree without further discussion.’

‘I had not realised that my father held Western women in such violent aversion.’

‘His Majesty does not. Have you not read the report on this woman?’

As he registered in relief that his father was responding to the treatment the worst of the tension holding Jaspar’s lean powerful frame taut ebbed and he breathed in deep. ‘I have not.’

‘I will bring the report to your office. Your Royal Highness.’ Rashad hurried off.

A thin hand beckoned from the great canopied bed. Jaspar strode forward and bent down to hear King Zafir’s last definitive words on the subject, uttered in a thready tone of deep piety that nonetheless held a rare note of pleading. ‘It is your Christian duty to rescue my grandson…’

As soon as the immediate emergency was over and his father had been made comfortable, Jaspar left the room. As he crossed the anteroom beyond, every person there dropped down on their knees and bent their heads. In receipt of that respectful acknowledgement of his recent rise in royal status, he clenched his strong jawline even harder. Reflecting on the recent death of his elder brother, Adil, who had been Crown Prince since birth, only made Jaspar feel worse than ever.

One day he would be King of Quamar but he had not been brought up to be King. In the instant that Adil had died, Jaspar’s life had changed for ever. He had loved his brother but had never been very close to him. Adil had, after all, been fifteen years older and cut from a different cloth. Indeed, Adil had often cheerfully called his younger brother a killjoy. But, almost inevitably, Adil’s excessive appetite for food and fat Cuban cigars had contributed to his early demise at the age of forty-five.

In the splendid office that was now his, Jaspar studied an oil painting of his jovial brother with brooding regret. Adil had also been an unrepentant womaniser.

‘I adore women. All of them…’Adil had once told Jaspar with his great beaming smile. ‘My wife, my ex-wives, my daughters included, but why should I settle for only one woman? If only we were Muslim, brother, I might have had four wives at a time and a harem of concubines. Do you never think of what life might have been like had our honoured ancestor, Kareem I, not founded us as a Christian dynasty?’

So, when Adil had not been carrying out his duties as Crown Prince, he had sailed his pleasure yacht, Beauteous Dreamer, round the Mediterranean with a string of beautiful fun-loving Western women aboard. Rumours of his eldest son’s discreet double life had occasionally caused King Zafir great disquiet but Adil had always been a most gifted dissembler and his women had always been willing to cover his tracks for him.

It seemed painfully ironic that the much-wanted son which Adil had failed to father with any of his three successive wives should have been born out of wedlock. Had that child been born within marriage, he would have been second in line to the throne but his illegitimacy barred him from what should have been his rightful place in life. Jaspar suppressed a heavy sigh. In his generation, the al-Husayn royal family had had little luck when it came to producing male heirs, although, having fathered several daughters, Adil had remained excusably optimistic that a son would eventually be born.

And just two years ago, a baby boy had been born to an English woman in London. During the hours that Adil had survived before the second heart attack had struck and proved fatal, he had confessed that shocking fact to their distraught father. Unsurprisingly, the news of that unknown grandson had become an obsession with the grieving older man but extensive confidential enquiries had been required even to track the woman down. In fear of a scandal that would reverberate all the way back to Quamar, Adil had gone to considerable lengths not only to disassociate himself from that birth, but also to conceal all evidence of the child’s existence.

It was a mess, an unholy mess, that he was being asked to sort out, Jaspar reflected bleakly as Rashad scurried in with much keen bowing and scraping to deliver a sealed file to his desk. His parent was too ill to be made to consider practicalities, but to bring Adil’s child back to Quamar, shorn of the supposedly unsuitable mother, would be very difficult, if not impossible.

‘His Majesty has made a most clever suggestion which would solve all the problems at once, Your Royal Highness,’ Rashad announced in a tone of excitement.

Jaspar regarded the older man in polite enquiry but with no great hope for Rashad was his father’s yes-man, guaranteed to always agree with and support his royal employer’s every spoken word.

‘We use our special forces and snatch the child…’ Jaspar drew in a very deep and necessary breath of restraint. Sometimes, his father astounded him. A feudal ruler from a young age, his exalted parent had never quite come to terms with the reality that a very different world lurked beyond Quamar’s borders.

‘There would be no need to negotiate with the foreign Jezebel and the boy would be whisked back to Quamar, renamed and raised as an orphan. Perhaps we could say that he is a distant cousin’s child,’ Rashad completed with immense enthusiasm.

Only the fond memory of Rashad playing with him when he was a child himself prevented Jaspar from venting his incredulous dismissal of such an outrageous suggestion. Rashad was not a clever man and he was out of his depth, his sole motivation being a desperate desire to tell his ailing royal employer what he most wanted to hear. As for his honoured parent and sovereign, Jaspar reflected in rueful exasperation, illness and grief had evidently temporarily deprived the head of the house of al-Husayn of his usual common sense and caution.

‘Please inform His Majesty that the situation will be resolved without the need for such a dramatic intervention,’ Jaspar stated drily.

‘His Majesty fears that he will die before he ever lays eyes on the child,’ Rashad lamented emotively.

Jaspar was well aware of that fact but also convinced that his father would soon recover his once excellent health if only he would stop fretting himself into pointless rages and thinking of dying. Casting open the file, he expected to see a photo of a leggy brunette of the type his late brother had appeared to find irresistible but there was no photo of either mother or child. So eager had the private detective been to report back on his success in locating the woman that he had wasted no time in gathering supporting evidence.

The child’s mother, Erica Sutton, had been christened Frederica, and her own mother had deserted her and her father within weeks of the birth of her twin sisters. At eighteen, Erica had left home with a neighbour’s husband in tow but that liaison had soon ended. Becoming a model but rarely working, she had then gone on to enjoy numerous affairs with wealthy married men.

When Erica had given birth to a child, nobody had had the slightest idea who had fathered him, but his mother’s newfound financial security had been marked by her purchase of a palatial apartment and the high-spending lifestyle of a party girl in constant search of amusement. As Jaspar read on, his lean, darkly handsome features grew steadily more grave. He was appalled by what he was learning and was no longer surprised by his father’s rage and concern. Taking the easy way out of an embarrassing predicament, Adil had left his infant son to the care of a cruelly irresponsible and selfish young woman, who appeared to have not the smallest maternal instinct.

Thrusting aside the file in disgust, Jaspar had not the slightest doubt that it was his duty to remove his nephew from such an unsuitable home. That a devoted nanny had evidently protected the child from the worst of his mother’s excesses was of little consolation, for a nanny was only an employee whose services might be dispensed with at any time. The little boy was at undeniable risk both emotionally and physically in his current environment, Jaspar conceded grimly.

His father had spoken wisely and Jaspar was ashamed that he had set such little store by the older man’s outraged condemnation of the child’s mother. The only solution was for his nephew to be brought out to Quamar. However, and Jaspar allowed himself a wry smile, he would achieve that feat without resorting to springing melodramatic manoeuvres with the army’s special forces and causing a diplomatic furore.

Frederica Sutton, known as Freddy since the age of eight and by her own choice, passed the letter from Switzerland over to the grey-haired older woman seated across the table from her. ‘What am I going to do now?’

Donning her spectacles and looking very much the retired schoolteacher that she indeed was, Ruth scanned the few lines with a frown. ‘Well, that’s that, then. You’ve exhausted every avenue—’

‘The only avenue.’ Freddy’s sole lead had been the Swiss bank account from which her late cousin, Erica, had received her generous income.

She had written to the financial institution concerned, explaining the circumstances in some detail. She had hoped that she might somehow establish even third-party contact with whoever had originally set up that payment system. Unfortunately, the cagey response she had received had made it painfully clear that the tenet of client confidentiality forbade any such sharing of information while adding that any more approaches from her or indeed anyone else would be a complete waste of time.

‘It’s hardly your fault that Ben’s father didn’t make provision for the reality that at some stage there might be a genuine need for further contact,’ Ruth Coulter mused ruefully. ‘Possibly he was making it clear that he wanted no more involvement under any circumstances…and who could have dreamt that a woman as young as Erica would die?’

At that reminder, Freddy’s aquamarine eyes clouded and she bent her blonde head until she had got her emotions back under control. Her cousin, Erica, had been only twenty-seven when she had met her death on the ski slopes in an accident that could have been avoided. But then Erica had died much as she had lived, Freddy conceded reluctantly, as though every day might be her last, running risk without thought and never, ever thinking of the future.

‘I know you miss Erica.’ The older woman gave Freddy’s hand a brief bracing squeeze. ‘But it’s been six weeks now and life has to go on, most particularly where Ben is concerned. I doubt if you will ever learn who his father is but in the long run that may even be for the best. Your cousin wasn’t very choosy about her male friends.’

‘She was trying to sort herself out,’ Freddy protested.

‘Was she?’ Ruth raised an unimpressed brow. ‘Of course, it’s wisest not to dwell on someone’s failings once they’ve gone. Naturally one prefers to remember the good things but one might be challenged in this particular case—’

‘Ruth…please!’Freddy was sincerely pained by that frank opinion. ‘Surely you remember what a dreadful childhood Erica had?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have much faith in the fashionable excuses for downright immoral behaviour. Erica brought that poor child into this world only because it paid her to do so.’ Ruth grimaced, her distaste palpable. ‘She lived like a lottery winner on the child support she received from Ben’s father but took not the slightest interest in her own son—’

‘She put Ben to bed and read him a story for the first time shortly before she died. They were beginning to bond—’

‘No doubt you shamed and coaxed her into the effort. If Ben’s father had not been an extremely rich and evidently very scared married man willing to pay heavily for her discretion, Erica would have had that pregnancy terminated,’Ruth opined without hesitation. ‘She had no interest in children.’

Giving up on her attempt to soften Ruth’s attitude towards Ben’s late mother, Freddy got up and knelt down by the little boy playing on the rug. Ben had his little cars lined up. He was dive-bombing them with a toy aeroplane and all the accompanying noisy sound effects. Aware that her hostess was finding the racket something of an irritation, Freddy directed Ben’s interest to a puzzle instead and sat by his side until his attention was fully engaged. He was a very lovable child and she adored him as though he were her own. An affectionate and good-natured little boy with dark curls and enormous brown eyes, Ben had been a premature baby.

Freddy had actually been living with Erica by the time that her cousin had gone into labour. Ben had spent the first few weeks of his life confined to an incubator and Freddy had always blamed that unfortunate fact for her cousin’s distressing inability to bond with her baby. Over the months that had followed in her role as nanny to Ben, Freddy had tried everything to encourage that maternal bond to develop and had even taken advice from a psychologist on her cousin’s behalf. But nothing had worked. Erica had continued to demonstrate little more interest in Ben than she might have done in a strange child passing her by in the street.

‘As you can’t contact the father, you need to contact the authorities and notify them about the situation,’Ruth advised. ‘It’s unfortunate that Erica didn’t simplify matters by leaving a will but, naturally, once her solicitor has sorted out her estate, everything will go to Ben as well as that continuing income.’

‘Ben’s going to be a very rich little boy,’ Freddy muttered heavily. ‘I expect people will queue up to adopt him and social services are bound to look for a family that are already wealthy in their own right. What hope have I got against that kind of competition? I’m single, currently unemployed and I’m only twenty-four—’

‘You’re also that child’s only known relative and you’ve been with him since birth.’ But Ruth Coulter spoke as if neither fact that might support the adoption application that the younger woman was determined to make was a source of satisfaction to her. ‘I wish you’d never got involved, Freddy. I can’t approve of an unmarried woman of your age taking on such a burden—’

‘Ben’s not a burden.’Freddy’s chin took on a stubborn tilt.

‘You’ve had no life of your own since you got tangled up with Erica’s problems.’ The older woman’s disapproval was unconcealed. ‘She used you quite shamelessly to take care of her responsibilities—’

‘I was paid an excellent salary to look after Ben,’ Freddy reminded her defensively.

‘For weeks on end without a break? Day and night and weekends too?’Ruth enquired drily. ‘Your cousin took advantage of your good nature and it’s no wonder you’re now thinking of that little boy as though he was your son. For the past two years, he might as well have been!’

Studying Freddy’s now flushed and guilty face, Ruth compressed her lips. She had once lived next door to the Sutton family and she had known both Erica and Freddy as children. Children who had been forever joking about the foolish fact that they both had the exact same name—Frederica. Their fathers had been brothers and both had named their daughters in honour of a spinster great-aunt in the forlorn hope that they would eventually be enriched by that piece of flattery. As, at that time, the two families had lost touch with each other, the coincidence had not been discovered until years later. When Erica’s parents had been killed in a car accident, Freddy’s widowed father had taken in his niece and brought her up with his own daughter.

But who could ever have dreamt that that generous act could have ended up working to Freddy’s detriment? In Ruth’s opinion, even as a child Erica had been dishonest and precocious, essentially shallow in nature but capable of exercising great charm when it suited her to do so. Ruth had not been impressed by Erica’s highly coloured stories of her late parents’ cruelty towards her, but a lot of people had been impressed even though there had been no proof whatsoever to back up her claims. Within the space of six months, Freddy had been the less favoured child in her own home, for Freddy had never been one to push herself forward or flatter.

Having always been very fond of the younger woman, who had lost her own mother at an early age, Ruth had not been as sorry as she felt she should have been when Erica had run off with a neighbour’s husband. Ruth had hoped that without her cousin around to hog the limelight, Freddy would grow in confidence. After all, Freddy was a pretty girl but, having had her self-esteem punctured by Erica at a sensitive age, she regarded herself as plain. Ruth was fond of little Ben as well but she was a pragmatic thinker. She did not want to watch Freddy sacrifice her youth and her freedom just to raise Erica’s son. Conscious of Ruth’s concerned disapproval and discomfited, Freddy left rather earlier than usual and caught the tube back to her late cousin’s apartment. For an instant, entering the spacious hall which gave only a tiny taste of the opulence yet to come, Freddy felt spooked. At any minute she expected Erica to drawl from the drawing-room, ‘Is that you, Freddy darling? I have the most horrible hangover. My appetite will need tempting tonight…or do you think I ought to settle for a hair of the dog that bit me? Do you think sobering up was the mistake?’

Her eyes stung with tears afresh. She had known Erica’s faults, had often despaired over her cousin’s self-destructive habits, but had continued to love her like a sister. In the right mood, Erica had been tremendous fun to be around and if she had been around a lot less than Freddy had wished since Ben’s birth, who was to blame for that?

The Arab Prince whom Erica had insisted had fathered Ben? No, Freddy hadn’t believed that particular story, most especially not when Erica had got really carried away and had added that one day her child’s father would be a king! So she had never shared that colourful tale with Ruth. It was just possible, however, that Ben’s father had been a rich Arab tycoon, the old geezer with the yacht and the taste for floating floozies whom Erica had been equally indiscreet about mentioning. But a royal prince…no way!

‘It’s time for your bath,’she told Ben, leading him through to the bathroom off the nursery.

‘Boats!’Ben exclaimed with satisfaction, rushing to gather up the plastic collection of toys in the string bag hanging from a hook. ‘Me play boats.’

‘And then we’ll have supper.’

‘Love you…’ Ben wrapped two small arms tight round Freddy’s knees and hugged her with all his might.

Her eyes prickled like mad and she was furious with herself. She was going to lose Ben. Waiting in hope of a helpful response coming from that stuffy Swiss bank had been foolish. There was no point kidding herself or trying to avoid the next step of notifying the authorities so that they could make legal decisions on Ben’s behalf. But if only it hadn’t been for all that wretched money! However, just as swiftly, Freddy told herself off for resenting the existence of the funds that would enable Ben to have the very best of everything as he grew up. Why didn’t she just face it? There was no hope of her being allowed to retain custody of Ben.

She was tucking the little boy into his cot when the phone rang and startled her. Once when Erica had been in residence it had rung off the hook at all hours but as word of her cousin’s death had slowly spread the phone had grown steadily more silent.

Answering it, she murmured, ‘Yes?’

‘I wish to speak to Miss Frederica Sutton,’ stated a dark masculine voice with an unmistakable foreign accent.

‘I’m Miss Sutton, but which—?’ Miss Sutton are you asking for, she meant to add.

‘Please make yourself available at ten tomorrow morning for my visit. I wish to discuss Benedict’s future. I warn you that if any other party is present in the apartment prior to my arrival, the visit will not take place.’

‘I beg your p-pardon?’ Freddy stammered in her astonishment at those instructions, but even as she spoke the caller concluded the call.

Frowning, she began to put together what she had been told. Had she just spoken to Ben’s father? Who else would wish to discuss Ben’s future with her? But how had he found out that Erica had died? For goodness’ sake, he might even be in regular contact with some friend of Erica’s! Or possibly her letter to that Swiss bank had discreetly been passed on even though the institution had officially refused to help. Anyway, what did it matter?

By the sound of it, it very likely was Ben’s father who was coming to speak to her tomorrow. Who else would be so concerned that there should be nobody else present during their meeting? Who else would demand and require such discretion? Although if that arrogant-sounding character who shot out demands without hesitation was a ‘scared’ married man, she would not have liked to meet a confident one!

Freddy went to bed that evening in a state of growing anxiety as she tried to imagine what plans the man might have for his secret son. She tossed and turned and wondered whether she ought to wear her nanny uniform and parade her excellent credentials in childcare in the hope of making the best possible impression. But in the end she discarded that idea for she wanted to make known her own blood tie with Ben, slender though it was. And with a rich domineering male, there was too much of a risk that her uniform would encourage him to look on her as a mere employee who could have no possible opinion worth hearing.

So she would put on her only suit and be suitably humble while listening, rather than attempting to impose any of her own views. She lay frantically trying to plunder her brain for what little Erica had said about the man who had got her pregnant. ‘The kindest man I ever met.’ Had her cousin been talking about Ben’s father or the Argentinian millionaire who had followed him? Or had the Argentinian preceded Ben’s conception?

In the darkness, Freddy blushed for her cousin’s many affairs. Erica had been very lovely though, and no doubt it had been hard for her to choose one man, especially when they had nearly always seemed to have a wife in the background. Freddy winced, recalling the times when she had tried to preach moral restraint to Erica and Erica would give her a sad look that had just torn at Freddy’s heart and say, ‘All I want is someone who will really love me.’And then spoil the effect by adding, ‘So what if he belongs to some other woman? Do you think she’d think twice in my shoes? It’s a hard world out there!’

By nine the following morning, Freddy was ready for her visitor. The apartment shone because she had got up at six to ensure that not a sliver of dust lurked in any corner. Garbed in a navy suit, white blouse and flat court shoes and with her thick curly blonde hair scraped back into an old-fashioned bun, which she felt gave her a much-needed look of greater maturity, Freddy surveyed her reflection with a critical frown. Then, remembering the spectacles she had once worn for eye strain while studying, she went and dug them out and perched them on her nose. Yes, indeed, she thought with satisfaction, she could easily pass for a sensible young woman of thirty, not that she would lie if questioned, but most probably she would not be asked.

‘The kindest man I have ever met,’ she kept on repeating to herself to ease her nervous tension. If she could just get the opening, she had lots of arguments to make in her own favour. Ben’s father would not need to maintain such a hugely expensive apartment for their benefit, nor would her own living expenses with Ben run to a hundredth of Erica’s. If he would only agree to her becoming Ben’s legal guardian, she would save him an absolute fortune in all sorts of ways! Please, please, please, she prayed, fingers knotted together as she paced up and down.

And then it finally occurred to her to wonder how Ben’s father had been able to say that he would not show up if there was anyone else in the apartment. A shiver of belated dismay ran down Freddy’s taut spine. The only way he could have uttered that warning would have been in the knowledge that he was having the apartment watched in advance of his own arrival and that was a seriously scary thought! Aware that she had disliked the handful of Erica’s male friends whom she had actually met, Freddy suddenly felt quite sick with worry. Ben was adorable but his father could well be a creep or a criminal or both!

The bell buzzed. Sucking in a shaky breath, Freddy went to answer the door. As she stood back, three dark-skinned men dressed in suits and built like human tanks strode into the hall. Completely ignoring her, they proceeded to march into every room of the apartment, evidently checking out whether or not she and Ben were on their own. Surging like a frantic mother hen into the lounge where Ben lay asleep on a sofa, Freddy stood over him, muttering, ‘Please go away…please don’t wake him up…he’ll be scared…I’m scared!’

One of the men spoke into a mobile phone and the trio regrouped together out in the hall while still behaving as if she were invisible. Trembling like a leaf, Freddy folded her arms and listened to the lift arrive with a ping on the landing outside the still-open front door: it was that quiet. She heard footsteps, a low exchange of masculine voices and then a tall dark male appeared in the lounge doorway.

He did not look like the kindest man she was ever likely to meet, but she kept on staring like an idiot because he was so incredibly good-looking she was knocked for six. She did not know quite what expectations she had had, but certainly she had assumed he would be a much older man. Not a guy who looked as if he wrestled with sharks for fun before breakfast, ran a couple of marathons before lunch, ruled some vast business empire throughout the afternoon and finished off the day by taking some very lucky woman to bed and exhausting her. Caught up in dismay by that last far too intimate thought, Freddy reddened to the roots of her hair.

‘You are Miss Frederica Sutton?’ he demanded, scanning her with brilliant dark deepset eyes that set her heart racing as if she had just heard a fire alarm.

Freddy nodded in slow motion, her entrapped attention running over his luxuriant blue-black hair, his fabulous bone structure, the delicious hue of bronze to his complexion, his arrogant nose, his sinfully beautiful mouth. He was an absolute pin-up, he was totally fantastic, and Erica must have fallen madly in love with him. Just about any woman would, Freddy reflected dizzily, until she recalled that he was a married man and strove in shame to rise above all such inappropriate and personal reflections.

‘Speak,’ he commanded.

It really was a command too, Freddy noted, still searching for her lost vocal cords. He spoke like a male who took it for granted that instant obedience to his every wish would follow. ‘I’m Frederica Sutton, just like—’my late cousin, the mother of your child, she had been about to say.

‘If I wish to enter a conversation with you, I will inform you,’her visitor drawled, running bold and derisive eyes over her taut figure, his highly expressive mouth curling at the corners. ‘I am Jaspar al-Husayn, Crown Prince of Quamar, and I stand here in my brother’s place as next closest of kin and uncle to your son, Benedict.’

Freddy’s hearing and comprehension seized up and slowed to a snail’s pace the very instant he mentioned that he was a prince, a Crown Prince moreover. Erica had not been telling entertaining fibs? Ben’s father was a royal prince? Silenced by sincere shock at that revelation, Freddy stared, eyes wide and shaken behind her spectacle lenses. But had he not also said that he was Ben’s uncle and not his father?

‘Why have you presented yourself to me dressed in that peculiar way? Do you think to impress me with the belief that you are a good mother? Though it must pain me to be so frank, I am well aware of the life that you lead and equally aware that your ugly appearance can only be a pretence calculated to mislead.’

He did not know that Erica was dead, she registered in dismay. He believed that she was Erica, got up to be ugly, for some strange reason. Ugly. Freddy experienced both anger and pain at that label. No, she knew she wasn’t pretty, but it was not good news to hear that a plain suit, a dated hairstyle and a pair of spectacles were sufficient to make her worthy of that cruel word: ‘ugly’. He looked like a dark angel, talked like an ignorant, unfeeling louse and probably couldn’t pass a single mirror without falling in love with his gorgeous reflection! Was it his business that she was not Erica? All that nonsense about discretion and here she was being treated like dirt and he wasn’t even Ben’s father!

‘Your brother…’Freddy murmured icily while drawing her slender frame taut to reach her full quota of five feet four inches, her back ramrod straight. ‘I’m prepared to speak only to your brother, Ben’s father.’

‘Adil died of a heart attack last month.’

Freddy frowned at him, her mind struggling to compute the reality that Ben truly was an orphan, that not only his mother but also his father was dead. She swallowed hard, seriously troubled by that news. By some awful quirk of fate, Ben had been deprived of the only remaining individual who had had an indisputable right to make caring choices on his behalf.

‘It is I who will take charge of Benedict and remove him from your less-than-adequate care.’ And having made that utterly devastating announcement, Crown Prince Jaspar strolled over to gaze down with unfathomable dark eyes at the little boy still curled up asleep on the sofa. ‘He is very small for an al-Husayn male. We are a tall family,’ he remarked critically.

‘What do you mean when you say that you are planning to take charge of Ben?’ Freddy mumbled, her tummy suddenly behaving as though it were a boat in a storm-tossed sea.

Her imagination was already running riot. She didn’t like him and she didn’t trust him. What did he mean by that comment that Ben was small? Use your brain and think fast, Freddy urged herself. Her shockingly offensive visitor could only be implying that Ben might not, after all, have al-Husayn genes. In other words, he was suggesting that Erica might have lied about her son having been fathered by his brother!

And wasn’t it perfectly possible that Jaspar al-Husayn might be hoping that Ben would prove not to be a member of his family? Now that Ben’s father had passed away, where did Ben come into the scheme of things? Why would this Crown Prince want to take Ben from a woman he believed to be his mother? Yet in contrast, his brother, Adil, had gone to great trouble to keep his illegitimate son a secret and had pledged a great deal of money to the task of ensuring that the child he’d had no intention of acknowledging would have a financially secure future.

‘If you value your present lifestyle and income, don’t argue with me,’ Crown Prince Jaspar murmured, smooth as silk.

And in that moment Freddy decided that it would be far too risky to disabuse him of his assumption that she was Ben’s mother. Not yet anyway. How far could she trust a male who had an advance guard of pure-bred thugs? He might well be a most unsavoury character. Certainly he behaved like one with that threat he had just uttered without conscience, announcing that he had the power to set aside the arrangements that his more responsible brother had put in place. What kind of a man spoke like that when a child’s needs and security lay in the balance?

And Jaspar al-Husayn needn’t bother looking down that classic nose at her as if she were the dust beneath his royal feet. In fact, Freddy, who had a temper that was usually slow to rise, was just about fizzing with rage in her determination to protect Ben. Only if her concerns were put to rest would she dare to concede the dangerous truth that as Ben’s uncle he had far more rights than she could possibly have.

‘Can you offer me proof of your identity?’ Freddy enquired, unleashing the first volley of what she expected to be a long and bitter defensive battle.

The brilliant dark eyes flashed gold, lush black lashes narrowing over his piercing gaze. ‘I have no need to offer such credentials.’

That rich dark drawl carried a note of incredulity that he could not hide. Freddy straightened her shoulders. ‘I don’t know you from Adam. You could be anybody and I’m not prepared to discuss Ben’s future without evidence that you are who you say you are.’

‘I am not accustomed to being spoken to in such a discourteous manner,’ Crown Prince Jaspar countered in the most lethal tone.

A chill ran down Freddy’s rigid spine but she needed time, time to check him out and time to take advice. That it would mean for ever burning her own boats with this arrogant male was unavoidable, for Ben’s safety and well-being were of paramount importance.

‘Perhaps you could come back tomorrow evening about eight with appropriate references,’ Freddy countered unevenly, somewhat intimidated by the aura of sheer blazing disbelief that emanated from him. ‘I will then be happy to sit down and discuss in a polite and civilised way what path his future should follow.’

‘You have angered me. You will regret it.’Jaspar al-Husayn swore very softly.

Pale as death, Freddy watched him stride from the room and listened to the front door thud shut in his wake. He had given her such a scare that she could hardly breathe. Ben began to wake up, sleepily rubbing his eyes and whimpering a little the way he often did at such times. Freddy gathered him up in her arms and hugged him to her, her heart racing. An orphaned child born of such important lineage and likely to inherit a large amount of money was a very vulnerable child, she reflected fearfully. She needed to make an appointment with a solicitor and check out her legal position.