Читать книгу His Arranged Marriage - Tina Leonard - Страница 11

“My spies tell me that the marriage is done,” Layla informed Azzam, “and the fact that we were not invited is insulting.”

“None were invited,” Azzam consoled her. “Put it from your mind.”

“I can’t.” Layla was festering inside. Azzam’s lack of concern for the situation distressed her to the point of pressing him. “Azzam, you trust Zak too much!”

Azzam shrugged. “I truly don’t have the thirst for intrigue that I once did.”

“I do,” she replied, her voice bitter. “The throne of Sorajhee is the only prize left to me in my old age and I would see the jewel polished more brightly.”

“You speak like a foolish old woman.”

Pride mixed with impatience stirred up a vicious cocktail inside Layla. “You would not speak so if you knew everything I have done to protect what is rightfully yours! How can you even speak of allowing Zakariyya to take it from you?”

Azzam’s eyes narrowed on her. “I doubt the wisdom in not exacting a punishment for your previous schemes. What have you done for me, besides be a choking bone in my throat with your constant demands for more power? More of everything? You wear me out, woman. No wonder I spend more time than ever in the comparative peace of my harem.”

Layla cloaked herself inside her robe, drawing the cloth tight against her body, a shield against his scorn. The beginning of hatred for her husband ate into her soul. What a blow to her pride that, after all the years she’d worked to make certain no Coleman-El Jeveds made a claim to the throne, one had apparently appeared like a bad dream from the past to do just that. She should have done more than convince Azzam to put Rose into a sanitarium and steal Rose’s one son away from her. She should have demanded to see the bodies of the three other Coleman-El Jeved princes when they were rumored to have died. But she’d been so certain that having Rose shut away would end any future threat to Azzam ascending to the throne. “I will take my leave of you now,” she said frostily as she bowed to Azzam. “If you will grant me so.”

He shrugged, losing interest in his petulant wife.

With that cool dismissal, Layla swept from the room. Fool not to see the danger under your very nose, Azzam!

But she did. And it was up to her to make certain that nothing stood in between her and the prize she coveted above all.

Balahar.

Fortunately, she had a few moves left to her. If the marriage was not consummated tonight, it would not be a legal and biding union. She had learned that the American was on his way to a neighboring country.

Between now and the time he departed, Serena’s new husband would find it very difficult to consummate the royal marriage.

She smiled to herself, and thanked Allah for inhibiting potions and loyal spies.

SERENA AND CADE sat beside each other at a table draped with a lavish cloth and more food than they could eat. A robed servant stood behind them, anticipating their dining needs. Cade ignored the tea the servant moved closer to his plate. He didn’t need tea, or food for that matter.

What he needed was to talk to Serena, and she hadn’t uttered more than two words to him so far. Did she plan to ignore him?

“Guess you’re not too crazy about being married to me,” he stated mildly.

“I am positive I could say the same about you.” She gave him a frank look that plainly said she was being restrained.

“I have to say you’re a relief,” Cade began, thinking to compliment the princess. “I was afraid you’d be…”

“Ugly?” Serena supplied.

He grinned. “Maybe on the unattractive side.”

“I am glad you do not find me so. I, on the other hand, thought you’d be a white and pasty American. I, too, find you a relief.”

Cade straightened. “You had to have known my family history. My father was Arab.”

“You are still darker than I expected.” Her eyes followed a trail of bare skin at his neck, and then skipped the covering of the robe to examine his hands. “And not the spoiled good-for-nothing playboy I was expecting. You have the hands of a man who works hard.”

“You watch too many American TV shows,” Cade said with a smile. The servant had moved the tea glass yet closer to his plate, and Cade pushed it away. “What other misconception can I clear up for you?”

“I have to be honest with you, Prince Makin,” Serena said, startling Cade with the subject of honesty and reminding him that he had a little truth he needed to share with her as well. “I dreamed of choosing a prince of my own, an Arabian of royal birth. I love it here in Balahar and would not wish to leave. I am far more Arab than I am American.”

“I’m far more American than I am Arab.” He thought about that. There was no way Mac was going to live in Balahar: he wouldn’t be happy here at all. Cade thought palace life would try his patience after more than a few days. “I think you’re going to end up living in America again, Princess.”

“I do not wish to leave my people.”

“You married me,” he said bluntly. “What did you expect?”

“Frankly, I expected you were marrying me to be in line for the throne.”

“Nope.” He pushed the goblet away for a final time, looking up at the servant. “Take the tea away. I do not want it.”

The servant jumped to remove the glass, his expression concerned. Cade couldn’t explain it, but something about the servant bothered him unreasonably. Maybe he was just tense from this princess problem. He turned his attention back full force to Serena. “I can tell you quite honestly that none of the Coleman males are interested in the Balahar throne.”

“Why do you say it that way?” Delicate chestnut eyebrows lifted with surprise.

“Just letting you know, Princess, in case you thought you’d married the wrong brother. We’re all the same on this subject.” It was the truth. Even if he weren’t masquerading as Mac, Cade would never be interested in this whole scenario.

Except maybe for the princess. He eyed her covertly over the food they both ignored. She was gorgeous and sexy, a hottie in gauzy fabric. But he couldn’t see her with Mac.

Uh-oh. I don’t even want to have this thought.

“Listen, princess—”

“Do you mind calling me by my name?” she asked. “Somehow, when you say princess, I’m pretty sure you’re not expressing a term of respect. I feel you could just as easily interchange babe, doll, or sweet cheeks for princess. And I don’t like it.”

She glared at him.

Caught by surprise, he hesitated before grinning widely.

“It’s your attitude,” she told him. “And your tone. I prefer you address me as Serena when we are alone together.”

“Anything else you want from me, Serena?”

“All I ask is that you always be honest with me. I didn’t expect a love match, but I would appreciate honesty and respect.”

“All right.” He tossed the napkin onto the table, unable to eat the strongly spiced food. “I did expect a pampered princess who would be mainly an ornament.”

“So sorry to disappoint you.” Her eyes blazed at him.

He drummed the table, causing the servant to jump to anticipate Cade’s needs. This put Cade into a worse mood, not the least because the tea he hadn’t wanted was replaced with something else—which he wouldn’t drink, either. “Can we ditch this guy? He’s like a jumpy puppy.”

The first hint of a smile he’d seen on Serena’s face came and went quickly—but it had been there. “I don’t mind.”

He waved a hand to dismiss the servant, who backed reluctantly from the room. “So, I’ll leave you here while I finish my business and then come back and get you sometime,” Cade offered.

“You do not intend to…to—”

“I don’t think so,” he interrupted. “It would be better if we didn’t.”

“But the marriage won’t be binding unless it’s consummated.”

“Do you want it to be binding?” He looked at her curiously.

“I—I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I don’t think we have much in common. Yet it would break my father’s heart.”

There was that. His mother would be none too pleased, either, especially when she discovered what he’d done.

“Don’t you want to make love to me?” she asked suddenly.

His throat dried out. His entire body electrified at her soft question. “I do, Princess,” he said, without a trace of the mockery with which he’d referred to her before. “But you want honesty, and you deserve that from your husband. And I can’t give that to you right now.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed. Then he leaned close to her ear, which brought the scent of her to him fully and made him somehow regret what he had to tell her. “I’m not Prince Makin,” he said.

SERENA HELD BACK A SMILE, thinking this prince had a strange sense of humor. “Of course you are Prince Makin. My father would know if you were not.”

“I have a twin, who is Prince Makin. I am Prince Kadar.”

She raised an eyebrow. “If that is true, why are you lying to my father? To the people of Balahar?”

“I had no intention of marrying you when I came here,” he said. She sensed the honesty behind his striking words. “Everything happened quickly. There didn’t seem to be a good time to pull the reins in, actually. And once I realized that I’d agreed to marry you, I didn’t want to insult King Zak by saying that I’d changed my mind.”

“I see.” Serena tried to hold back her rising dismay. “No, I don’t see. So you didn’t marry me for the throne of Balahar.”

“No.”

He shook his head, and a vague sense of feminine insult, no matter how irrational it should have been, rose inside her. “Where is Prince Makin, your brother, then? The man I was intended to marry?”

“At home, tending to The Desert Rose.”

“You are his emissary. He sent you to spy on me.”

“No. Well, maybe. I had business over in Saudi Arabia and said I’d pop by and visit you. This wasn’t the way I intended for the visit to work out, obviously.”

“You’d pop by and visit me. How American that sounds.” She was starting to feel more than a trace of bitterness. “So you popped by and married me instead.”

One dark brow rose as he stared at her. “You have every right to be angry. I fully expect that we can have this marriage annulled because it won’t be consummated. Then you can marry my twin, who is your proper intended.”

“Or?” Now her brow rose. “I assume there’s an ‘or’ in this.”

He shrugged. “You could come home with me. I’m not flying commercially, and my co-pilot is waiting at the airport, so we’d have plenty of secrecy.”

“The purpose of coming with you would be?”

“Popping by and checking out Mac. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.”

She refused to smile at his suggestion, although his tone suggested irony. “Prince Kadar, I am not a plaything.”

“I am not suggesting you are.” He leaned close to where she sat, touching her hair with a reverent finger. “Quite the opposite. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Both her brows rose in astonishment. “I find that difficult to believe from such a playboy.”

“I am not a playboy!”

“A man who ‘pops’ by a foreign country to check out the goods is obviously a connoisseur. Or else your brother wouldn’t have sent you,” she stated with conviction. “Besides, your very personality tells me that you are too confident that no matter what situation you find yourself in, you always find a way to turn it to your advantage.” She raised her chin. “I do not like that trait in you. You remind me of Prince Sharif.”

“I wouldn’t compare me to a spoiled prince.”

“Oh?” She smiled without the sentiment behind it. “You know so much about him then, in the thirty minutes you’ve seen him?”

“He reminds me of someone I know.” His voice was thoughtful. “And he doesn’t like me, I can tell.”

“How intuitive of my brother, then,” she said sarcastically. “To mistrust a man who is lying to him, marries his sister under false pretenses, and is no more a real prince than any commoner living outside these walls.”

“I am from the family I say I am,” Cade said sternly.

“It takes more than the accident of royal blood to make a prince,” Serena retorted. “Do not disparage my brother in the future. And don’t try to turn this particular situation to your advantage. I refuse to be manipulated for your purposes.” She crossed her arms. “Why should I not go to my father this instant and tell him what you’ve done?”

“Because I think you know that I mean you no harm. And I understand you being a little insulted that I don’t want to stay married to you, but you have to understand that my brother is—”

“I think I’ll keep you,” Serena said suddenly. “The punishment for your rash behavior should be to deal with your actions.”

“Hey, Princess, I’m not a child or one of your servants to command—”

“No, but you have wronged me. Do not play the injured party when it is me, Prince Kadar.” Serena could tell he didn’t like the tables being turned on him one bit, and that feeling of power provoked her into words. “You find me beautiful. I find you somewhat handsome.”

“Somewhat handsome!”

“Somewhat. Passably,” Serena said, glossing over the feminine fib. “I’m assuming I’d find your twin just as attractive, but he let you steal me away from him and I can’t admire that in a man.”

“Wait! I didn’t mean to steal you.”

“I am not in a mind to have my marriage annulled,” she cut in. “Already there are people who wish to see my father undermined, and such hesitation would definitely factor in weakness.”

“I don’t follow your thinking, Princess.”

“Of course you do not. You have not lived among palace spies and royal intrigue all your life. Quite simply, within moments of this problem getting out, those who wish harm to my father would know. And they would use the time needed to annul this marriage to their advantage. In other words, I can’t risk the danger to my father by playing games. You are married to me, and you will stay so.”

“That sounds dangerously like a command, Princess.”

She heard the steel in his voice and saw the glint in his eyes. This was a man who did not like to be pushed around. He had strength in him.

He would be good for Balahar and Sorajhee.

Allah provided in strange ways, but those ways should not be questioned by a princess who wanted more than anything the best for her people.

“It is not a command, my prince,” she said, her soft voice masking her determination. “It is merely a favor I am asking in return for a situation you brought on me not of my making. I know you to be a man who will take responsibility for your actions, and who would not wish to bring embarrassment upon me or my father.”

He considered her suddenly gentle point in silence. Serena could tell he was thinking over her words, although he wasn’t terribly happy.

“You will have to explain to your brother, of course, that the two of you made a plan between you that did not work out the way you’d hoped.” She gave a delicate shrug. “But if he sent you in his place I think he will not mind too much that I will be yours instead of his.”

That was truth. Kadar never blinked, confirming her suspicions that Prince Makin had not been amenable to the match. She did not want a husband who did not want her. At university in America, she had learned many quaint expressions, and one of them was that the devil one knew was better than a devil one didn’t.

And this devil wasn’t totally hellish. He would be strong for Balahar, and she found him appealing as a man. For an extra moment she examined her motives, to make certain it was not her feminine heart-strings that spoke to her reluctance to give up this man.

The servant entered the room, moving forward with more food and yet a different drink for Prince Kadar, and Serena was decided. “Leave us,” she told the servant.

The servant obeyed readily.

“Don’t drink that,” Serena told Kadar.

“Why not?”

She had expected him to question her. “It is drugged.”

His gaze went to the goblet again before returning to her. “Okay, first, were you going to let me drink the tea he’d given me before, and second, why are you harboring a palace spy?”

“You made no move to drink the tea, so you were safe. My father is trying to make his honored guest feel at home. He is honoring you, and you would drink and eat in recognition of your host’s efforts. The spy is counting on your manners for the best chance at drugging you.”

“Oh. I apologize for not falling in with the plan.”

She shot him a dry glance. “I am harboring, as you put it, a palace spy because it is better to keep the spy that I know. If I get rid of him, Queen Layla will merely find another weak link in the palace to do her dirty work. And I wouldn’t know who that one was for a while, which could be dangerous.”

“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” He grinned at her.

“Precisely my thought,” she said mildly. “I am glad that we think so much alike. It bodes well for our marriage.”

He shifted, suddenly on unfamiliar ground. “Why would anyone want to poison me, beyond the expected threat to the throne?”

She laughed softly at how tense his muscles had gone under his dark skin. Clearly this man did not like to be caught out of his element. “I suspect it is a drug to keep you from making love to me.”

Straightening, he pulled slightly farther away from her. “I’m not going to make love to you.”

“You’re not?” Her voice held laughter. “Will you never want me, Prince Kadar?”

“I…I—” He stared at her, uncertain as to how to answer. “Are they going to try to drug me every day so I can’t make love to you?”

“I suspect they know you are leaving Balahar soon. The servant will have immediately let them know any plans you might have mentioned to my father. In the future, you must remember that every wall hides a listening ear and absolutely no one is to be trusted.”

“Hell of a way to exist,” he grumbled.

“You seem to be able to think on your feet. You can survive once you learn some basic skills of royal life.” She smiled at him encouragingly. “To get back to the dilemma we are facing, if you can’t perform your princely duty before you leave,” Serena said with a smile, “the marriage has a chance of being undone. It can be annulled. Queen Layla would have a chance to think of a hundred reasons why this marriage should not be. Maybe a thousand reasons, given the insult she will be feeling for not being invited to the wedding. As I said, it is not in Balahar’s best interests for anything to undo our marriage. Thus, we must make love.”

She saw him take a deep breath, saw his eyes slide over her in a swift, assessing sweep. From the darkening of his pupils, there apparently was nothing he found repulsive about the task ahead of him.

“You think faster on your feet than I do. You’ll have to give me a minute to think this through. I don’t know that I can make love to a woman intended for my brother. My mind still thinks of you that way.”

She leaned close to him, near enough to tease him with her perfume and her femininity. “Prince Kadar, your brother did not want me.”

“He didn’t have a chance to find out.”

“The race goes to the swiftest,” she said, placing her fingers lightly over his hand. “In this case, the crown, with all its benefits and drawbacks, goes to the fastest warrior. That would be you, Prince Kadar.”

“Only because Mac—”

“You are my choice,” she told him sincerely. “His arranged marriage is now yours.”

She admired his consideration for his brother, Serena decided. He put other people’s needs and wishes in front of his own. That was a quality a strong ruler needed. This was the right prince for Balahar.

“Prince Kadar, I promise you will not find me a clinging wife. I am an independent woman. You will not need to keep me entertained, nor treat me like the pampered lapdog you seem to have expected. I am a woman who wishes to put the country she loves first.” She took a deep breath, knowing that Kadar’s answer meant everything to her. “So, my husband, do you find me desirable enough to make love to me?”