Читать книгу Conquering His Virgin Queen - Pippa Roscoe - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

August 1st, 22.00-23.00, Heron Tower

ELOISE COULDN’T QUITE believe she’d heard him correctly, only just resisting the urge to shake her head and dislodge the imaginary blocking of her ears.

He wanted her to do...what?

Was this some kind of sick joke?

But the grim look of determination painted across Odir’s features spoke volumes.

Her mind raced, working through each of the different possibilities at lightning speed, and the quicker it went the sicker she felt with each passing second. The amount of money was obscene, and certainly more than her grandfather’s trust fund. It wouldn’t only pay for Natalia’s medical bills far into the future, it would allow the medical centre on the brink of closure to move forward and help so many more people.

But she would have to return to Odir’s side. She would have to return to Farrehed under the microscope of the world’s press. She would never go back to her little Swiss flat, would never see Natalia’s happy smile and enjoy her easy companionship. She would never have the freedom of walking alone through the clean, beautiful streets of Zurich. She would have to give up her position as PA to the medical centre’s CFO.

Hurt opened up a chasm within her. She loved her job—she liked working. Like feeling that she was paying her own way for once in her life and doing something good. And now, just like that, all the possible futures she was considering burnt to ash.

If she were to accept the money—for the centre—she would never be free. She would be required to provide heirs in a marriage built on nothing but lies and distrust. She had grown up the product of such a marriage, and the one vow she’d ever made to herself was that she would never do to a child what had once been done to her.

She looked at Odir and was surprised to find him smiling.

‘I can see that you’re thinking about it,’ he said.

He stalked over to the drinks cabinet and poured himself the whisky he’d wanted earlier that evening. He grimly wondered why he wasn’t happier with her consideration of his proposal—why there wasn’t a feeling of victory spreading through him. Then he forced his mind ahead a few hours to the international press conference arranged for eight the following morning.

To be standing alone when he made his announcement would make him look weak—would make his country look weak—and that was simply untenable.

He felt suddenly as if he were standing on a precipice the size of the Grand Canyon. Farrehed was about to be plunged into a time of great turmoil, and as he looked over at the slip of a woman standing before him, staring at him in horror as if he were the devil, he knew that she alone could ensure its security.

* * *

‘You can’t make such an obscene offer and then stand in silence waiting for a response,’ Eloise declared.

She had been watching him closely. She had seen the emotions pass over his distinguished features. Her father had never liked Odir. He’d said it was because he could never tell what the young royal was thinking. But Eloise had never had that problem. Although she couldn’t explain why, she had always known what he was thinking. She had before, and she did now.

Despite the obvious distaste he felt about the offer he was making, the belief that he had her agreement had relaxed his frame. She knew that look well. It was the same look her father would get when he knew he was going to get what he wanted.

And she hated it.

Summoning up all her strength, she knew that there was no way she could return to the marriage she had left—no matter what she had once felt for Odir. She was tired of people thinking the worst of her, tired of the sacrifices she had made for people who cared nothing for her, tired of being alone and unwanted.

‘I will not take one penny of your money, Odir. I want a divorce and I’ll do whatever—whatever—it takes to get it.’

‘I’ll double it,’ he replied, as if a total of fourteen million pounds were nothing to him.

She bit back the curse that threatened to fall from her lips. With that much money she could move Natalia and the whole medical facility to Farrehed. She might even be able to convince her mother to come too. The people she loved the most in the world would never want for anything ever again.

Nausea rolled through her as she realised that she was actually considering his offer. Never had she dreamed that there would be anything he could say to make her consider returning to that life—the life she had fled from.

She took a breath and closed her eyes. Count to ten. Always count to ten before making a decision.

* * *

It was as if the world had stopped turning. He could see it in her eyes. He could see that she was about to say the one word he needed to hear.

And then the tension was broken in an instant with three little knocks on the door. He could have kicked something. Hard.

‘Enter,’ he commanded in a tone that implied nothing of the sort.

His aide peered round the door.

‘Your speech, My—Sir,’ the aide hastily corrected himself. ‘It is time.’

Odir cursed out loud and his aide looked shocked. Odir had not realised they had spent so long in the suite. Once again his wife was distracting him from his duty. Just as she had done during their engagement. His preoccupation with her—his determination to forge a kind of relationship that wouldn’t replicate his parents’—had spectacularly backfired, and prevented him from seeing the damage his father was doing.

He was going to have to pay more attention. Because he didn’t have time for mistakes. He hadn’t expected Eloise to jump at his offer, but still... There had been something unsettling about her response. It hadn’t quite rung true. If she was just after money there would have been something like victory, like avarice in her eyes... Not what he had seen—what he didn’t want to put a name to.

Because if he did it might just undo all his carefully made plans.

Without waiting to see if she would follow, Odir strode from the room and entered the lift. He felt some small satisfaction when Eloise stepped in just behind him and took her place beside him.

The silence between them held all the way back to the function room and Odir used every second of it to curse his father for more things than one, and to curse his own youthful stupidity.

He had agreed to the convenient marriage laid out by both their fathers. A marriage that would benefit all concerned.

But that hadn’t been what he’d wanted once he’d met Eloise.

Perhaps it was because they had met before she’d known who he was. That day in the stables. Had she slipped under his defences then? The first woman not to treat him with calculating looks and speculation? She had turned her quick-witted tongue against him, mocked him as no one had done before. Perhaps it was then that his desire for her had flamed brightest—before he had discovered his father’s wishes and her identity.

Or perhaps it was when he’d thought he’d seen the relief in her eyes as he’d approached her with his offer. One that would welcome a relationship between them.

He’d wanted his future to be more than a cold arrangement but less of an intense obsession such as his father had felt for his mother. He’d thought the practicality of that would safeguard him.

But he’d been wrong.

The evening of his wedding the kiss they’d shared had been incendiary. One he’d so desperately wanted to explore that when his aide had approached him, panicked with the news that might throw Farrehed into war, Odir had paused.

For one moment he’d actually considered letting the world go to hell, because all he’d wanted was to lose himself in his new bride. To luxuriate in the sensual promise still heavy on his tongue from her lips.

And in that horrible moment he’d known the madness his father had felt for his mother.

The fact that his father had used his son’s wedding day to disguise his invasion into Terhren was unspeakable. But the greater betrayal was Odir’s, because he should have known better.

So he’d left his bride waiting for him in his palace suite and taken a helicopter with a handful of aides, leaving the rest to follow the next day. And he had embarked on three weeks of intense, secret negotiations with the Sheikh of Terhren.

And when he’d returned? He’d done everything in his power to shake the hold of their attraction. To ensure that he would never be tempted to disregard his duty again. He’d thrown himself into trade negotiations, soothing the effects of his father’s hurts and betrayals, and developed the infrastructure that would make Farrehed great again.

And now, to ensure that all that work, all his sacrifice, wouldn’t crumble to dust come eight tomorrow morning, he needed his wife’s agreement to return to his side.

He would have her answer before he gave the speech. And if she still said no? Well, then he had his next weapon at hand—one that she wouldn’t be able to shake off.

* * *

The noise that greeted them as they exited the lift was deafening and disorientating.

The events of the last hour had gone to her head. Odir’s offer, delivered in the form of an uncompromising command, still pounded in Eloise’s head, mixing with the painful cacophony of hundreds of inebriated conversations.

It was a shock to the system for a woman who had been living such a quiet, modest and almost unrecognisable life for the last six months.

Each and every one of them would stop and stare if they knew that the future Sheikha of Farrehed had been working as a personal assistant to the CFO of a private medical facility, tucked away in the heart of Zurich.

Eloise’s heart ached. She missed the calm practicality and sensible comfort of her life there. It hurt to step back into this world of deceitful smiles, barbed compliments and cutting remarks, all hidden beneath a light tone as if laughter would make such inherent rudeness socially acceptable.

She looked about her and saw it all dressed up in diamonds as if they would hide the dirt. And she wondered for perhaps the first time what would happen if she let her poised façade drop and allowed her true self out...

* * *

Odir nearly groaned out loud as the young Prince of Kalaran marched towards them with a sneer painted across his fleshy features.

‘Odir,’ he said, barely veiling his contempt, and then turned to Eloise. ‘Oh, I don’t think we’ve met?’

Fury ignited in Odir and protective instincts danced across his hackles. It was one thing for him to take issue with his wife, but something completely other for the Prince of Kalaran to be so openly disrespectful to the future Queen of Farrehed. The man’s audacity made him furious.

He was about to say something when he felt the soft hand of his wife on his arm.

‘Oh, we have,’ Eloise assured him. ‘In fact, wasn’t it Prince Imin who threw up on the sixteenth-century hand-woven tapestry at our engagement party, darling?’ she asked of Odir.

‘I had thought that was a cousin of the Duke of Cambridge, but now you mention it...’ he replied with the affected haughty disdain she had once mocked him for.

‘I believe it cost nearly two thousand pounds to get it cleaned,’ she continued.

‘It was more in the region of four, if I remember rightly.’ Odir frowned, as if giving it deep thought.

‘Two thousand pounds is nothing compared to what your father and brother cost Kalaran,’ Imin spat angrily.

‘You will address my husband by his proper title, Prince Imin,’ Eloise commanded, and the ice in her voice was enough to cover the desert in frost.

Shockingly, a look of contrition passed over the man’s features.

‘Prince Imin, whatever deals my father made with yours I will take up directly with him,’ Odir said.

‘Oh, good. I had been concerned by recent news of his ill health. I do so hope that everything is okay, Sheikh Odir.’

Odir balled his hands into fists, only Eloise’s grip on his arm anchoring him to the moment.

‘Prince Imin, whilst it has been...interesting to see you again, I’m afraid there is someone over there with whom we have important things to discuss.’

With that snub, expertly delivered, Odir allowed himself to be led away by his wife.

This was what he had wanted from their union. A partnership—someone to stand beside him as he navigated the furious waters of the treacherous political sea wrought by his father’s grief-stricken madness. That was what he had once seen in Eloise, and the glimpse of what might have been struck him dumb for just a moment.

And, then, he could scarcely believe that Eloise was giggling.

‘Did you see the look on his face? I thought... I thought he was going to explode,’ she said awkwardly in between bursts of laughter.

Odir felt an answering smile tugging at his lips. ‘Would that he had...’

The mirth left her eyes, and something sober passed across her features.

‘Is that what you’ve been dealing with?’

‘What?’ he asked, pulling himself from thoughts of his wife.

Was this not what he’d wanted to avoid? The all-consuming thread that wound around them until all he could see was her?

‘When did things become so bad between Farrehed and Kalaran?’ Eloise asked, wide eyed.

‘After Jarhan’s broken engagement and the recent trade agreements with Terhern things have been difficult,’ Odir admitted.

It wasn’t as if he were confiding in her—just that he was sharing things she would have to know once she returned to his side, he told himself.

‘I hadn’t realised...’

Odir let an exhausted breath escape. ‘Do you really care, Eloise?’

Hurt slashed across her features. ‘Of course I do, Odir. Farrehed became my country—they are my people too,’ she said.

And in that moment Eloise realised the truth of her words. The time she had spent working with the desert tribes had shown her the strength of Farrehed’s nomadic people.

Memories played with her, dancing across her skin the way the desert heat and sun once had, making her feel warm for the first time in what felt like years. Instead of burning and swelling up within the arid atmosphere, as she had once feared, Eloise had felt herself come alive. It had been a different sort of life from the one she had carved for herself in Zurich, but one she was surprised to find that she’d missed.

As they moved through the crowd Eloise slipped a practised smile onto her lips and scanned the people about her without really seeing anyone.

Until her eyes rested on a familiar face beside the bar and several threads of emotion wrapped themselves around her, pulling on her heart. Pleasure, sadness, surprise and a little fear. Jarhan was propping up the bar, a drink in his hand. She’d never seen Jarhan drink until that night six months ago. She wondered why he was here. It was strange that the two Farrehed Princes would be at such a minor event in the royal social calendar.

Jarhan met her eyes, expressing a wealth of emotion he’d never been able to give speech to. And just like that something eased around her heart. She could tell that he regretted that night more than anything. He could never have guessed at its shocking consequences, and Eloise felt sadness and pity rise within her.

A conciliatory smile threatened to lift the corners of her mouth. He had been such a source of comfort to her during her husband’s long absences. He had been sweet, and funny, but always seemingly on the outskirts of the royal family. Never quite fitting in.

She supposed that it was quite possible he never would now. Not after the broken engagement that had followed the events of the night that had started all this...mess.

She felt Odir’s heavy gaze on her and turned to him.

‘Don’t test me, habibti,’ he whispered, with more anger than she had expected, or had ever heard in his voice before. ‘I need your answer and I need it now.’

She looked back to Jarhan, saw in him the cost of duty and sacrifice, saw the weight of it almost crushing her friend, and knew then and there that she would not—could not—live like that.

‘No, Odir. My answer is and always will be no. There’s too much hurt—’

‘Don’t talk to me of hurt. Not tonight, Eloise.’ He gave her a grim smile. ‘I’m sorry, but you have left me with no choice.’

With that he departed, pushing his way through the throng of international dignitaries, socialites, actors and actresses—the world’s wealthiest people, all waiting for him.

Without needing to request silence, he ensured the crowd was hushed and ready for his welcoming words.

Eloise was suddenly unsure. What had he meant by that?

At first her concern was so great she could not quite make out the words of his speech. She turned to Jarhan, but he was no longer by the bar and she couldn’t see him anywhere. There was no comfort, no support—nothing and no one she could lean on. She was alone in a sea of people, and only the sound of her husband’s voice tied her to the land.

Swells of gentle laughter crashed against her as the crowd lapped up the speech asking for generous donations to the charity Odir had spoken of earlier in the evening. The part of her mind engaged in the present dimly recognised that the initiative Odir was presenting had been a project she had started months before she had left. A project that he had seen to fruition.

Anger warred with confusion at the threat he had left her with, and she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she had been backed into an invisible corner. Eloise knew—just knew—that Odir was about to do or say something that she would never be free from.