Kitabı oku: «The Santina Crown Collection», sayfa 2

Steadying her breathing she told Ash as calmly as she could, ‘When I marry I want to know and respect my husband and our marriage. I want to love him and be loved by him. I want us to bring our children up in the safe secure circle of that love.’ That, after all, was the truth.

And it was a truth that Ash heard and couldn’t refute. He frowned. Against his will he was forced to acknowledge that there was something in her voice that touched old nerves, revived old memories. Revived them? Since when had they really needed reviving? He had never forgotten, could never forget.

‘Please, Ash, I’m begging you for your help.’

CHAPTER TWO

THOSE words—the same words with which she had cried out to him once before—sliced through his self-control, cutting the cords that held fast the doors to the past.

Once before Sophia had begged him for something.

She’d been just past her sixteenth birthday the last time he’d seen her. He could still remember the shock he had felt at seeing her all grown-up. One minute—or so it had seemed—she had been a child, but somehow six months later she had been trembling on the brink of what would become her womanhood, a girl still for all her burgeoning physical maturity, a girl with tears tracking down her cheeks, her huge dark brown eyes drowning in tears. Then she had still been an innocent: naive, unknowing, virginal and vulnerable. He had been determined that it would not be through him that any of those things were taken from her, no matter how hard she begged him to do so.

What had happened to her during those intervening years to turn her into the wanton sensualist she was now? Why should he care? The sixteen-year-old towards whom he had felt so protective belonged to another life, another Ash.

Even then she’d been sensationally beautiful, with everything about her already hinting at the sensuality to come. Then she had had the promise of a sweet, almost ready-to-ripen peach, yet still a girl compared to his adult-male maturity, and his natural sense of responsibility and moral probity had naturally reacted to that. He had known that he had a duty towards her to protect her not just from herself but from that shock of awareness within himself of the fact that she was becoming a desirable woman.

Ash discovered that there was suddenly a sour taste in his mouth. For himself. For that brief ripping through his moral code, caused by the shocking sexual awareness he’d had of her when he had seen the change in her. Desires he never should have had for that girl given the protective role he had previously played in her life and the fact that he had been about to be married.

Desires he still had for her? He swallowed hard against that question. She was a woman, and available. He was a man, but he could not allow himself to want her. He would not allow it. After all, he had nothing left within him to give to a woman like Sophia, who so obviously brought emotional passion to her relationships along with her sexual desire. A grim wryness filled him. So he was back in his old role towards her, was he, protecting her from his own desire?

‘Ash, please.’ The panic in Sophia’s voice made Ash frown. Twice before he had heard her say his name in that same tone of mingled fear and need and now somehow his body reacted to that memory, instinctively halting him in his tracks.

‘Sophia …’

‘Please, Ash. I need you. There isn’t anyone else I can turn to.’

‘No? What about one of those young men who share your bed?’ His challenge was harsh and acerbic.

This was getting dangerous, Sophia recognised. The conversation was going now in a direction she most certainly did not want.

‘That’s just sex. What I need from you is help.’

Just sex? Ash could almost taste the ferocity of the atavistic emotions surging through him.

Across the years that separated him from those other occasions inside his head he could see the sixteen-year-old she had been, pleading with him for something it was impossible for him to give her. He could almost smell the hot summer fragrance of the small grassy bank on which they’d been sitting. Inside his head he could see a clear image of her in her thin cotton dress. It had shown quite clearly the perfect shape of her high rounded breasts with their eager thrusting nipples pushing against the fabric, just as she had pushed against his chest with small fists when she had begged him to take her and show her what it was to be a woman—and the icy cold shock to his system it had given him to realise that his awareness of her was darkened by the sexual desire. He had wanted to walk away from her there and then, to put an end to the danger he could sense, but before he could do anything she had continued emotionally, ‘I’m the only girl in my class who’s still a virgin, and I hate it. The other girls laugh at me because of it. They say that I’m a baby and …’

He could still remember the duality of the feelings her confession had brought him. Firstly, a desire to protect her and defend her, but beneath that, shockingly and shamefully, a slow awareness of the sweet pleasure there would be for the man to whom she would ultimately give herself for the first time. He had reminded himself that he was too old for her, and that she was too young for him. To even think about doing as she asked would be an abuse of their relationship that could never be allowed, but still there had been, inside his head, that treacherous thought that were she two years or so older and he two years or more younger … He would what? Bed her and then leave her—dishonour her—for the marriage that had been arranged for him since childhood? Never.

And so he had put temptation aside and told her as though it was no concern to him, ‘I’m sure there are any number of boys your own age who would be delighted to relieve you of your virginity.’

‘I don’t want it to be them, I want it to be you,’ she insisted, her eyes dark and stormy with the heat of her need.

Only he knew how tempted he’d been to wish away some of the years that separated them and to give in and take her. Just the smell of her sun-warmed skin had sent him half maddened with aching, longing to lie her down and lick and kiss his way over every inch of her delectable, hotly eager body until he reached those dark flaunting nipples. Inside his head he had already been suckling on them, drawing cries of tormented delight from her whilst his hand covered the wet heat of her sex and his fingers teased an open eager passage.

The secret betrayal of his thoughts and his body had felt to him as much of a betrayal of his duty to protect her as it was of the duty that lay on him towards his future bride and their marriage.

He had been angry. With himself more than with Sophia but it had been on her he had vented his anger, telling her savagely, ‘It can’t be me. You already know that, Sophia. I’m engaged to be married.’

‘An arranged marriage,’ she had reminded him. ‘Not a love match.’

Something in the truth of her words had turned a knife in his heart as sharp and destructive as one of the fine jewelled daggers favoured by his ancestors, cruelly sharp knives that could rip out the heart of a man and still leave that heart beating and the man breathing. For a while.

‘My marriage is my concern, and as for it not being a love match, it will be my duty and my pleasure to learn to love my wife and to teach her to love me. My very great pleasure.’

His words had been cruel. He had seen that in the look in her eyes. He had taken a step towards her, Ash remembered, and then he had stopped as she dashed away the tears she hadn’t been able to control. A child’s tears, and if he had been cruel then it had been to protect that child.

And now as then, Ash wanted to turn and walk away from her, but somehow he couldn’t, just as he couldn’t drag his gaze from her or stop his body reacting to her. His own weakness lashed at him, biting deep into his pride. But still he looked, still he let his senses fill with the pleasure of her.

Her dark curls caressed the bare shoulders revealed by her figure-hugging goddess-style amber-gold silk dress with its diamante waistband, her velvet-soft eyes sparkling, her lips warm and invitingly parted. They would taste of sensuality and promise, and her low-cut gown would be no barrier to the man who was determined to enjoy exploring the soft warmth of her naked breasts. But that man would never be him. Sophia was the sister of one of his closest friends; she was passionate and emotional. To bed her would bring complications into his life that he didn’t want. And why would he need to bed her when he had so many other willing women to choose from who understood that sex was all he required from them? Sex and nothing more.

Oblivious to the turmoil of Ash’s most private thoughts, Sophia looked over at the table where her parents were seated with some of their guests. As always it was her father who was commanding everyone’s attention whilst her mother looked on, her blonde head inclined towards him, her whole manner one of calm, controlled formality. Just as her father demanded. Just as the husband he had chosen for her would demand of her. She was not her mother. Her own nature was far more turbulent and intense. Still focusing on the table, she told Ash with fierce desperation, ‘My father thinks he can argue me into giving way. But I won’t.’

Ash could hear the desperation in her voice. Against his will he found himself thinking that she reminded him of a beautiful butterfly beating her wings against the iron bars of a cage that imprisoned her, her desperate attempt to find freedom destined only to leave her crushed and broken. Unexpectedly, for all the gossip about her hedonistic lifestyle, there was still an innocence and vulnerability about her. Against his better judgement he realised that he felt sorry for her, but he knew her father and he knew that King Eduardo would not give up his plans easily. He was as traditional and old-fashioned a father as he was a king, ruling his family and his country with the firm belief that they were his to command and control and that their duty was to obey him in all things. He did feel sorry for her, he allowed himself to acknowledge. Yes, but it was not his business and there was nothing he could do, other than offer her a reminder of the reality of what being royal meant.

‘As your father’s daughter you must always have known that ultimately he would arrange a marriage for you to someone he considers to be suitable?’

Just for a minute Sophia was tempted to drop her guard and admit to him that the kind of marriage of which she had always dreamed and for which she had always yearned was one based on mutual love, not dynastic necessity. But she knew that if she did that she might easily betray to him what she did not want him to know. She had her pride after all, and she certainly wasn’t going to have him feeling sorry for her because she wanted …

What? Love from the one man she knew would never give it to her? No. She might have wanted that once as a foolish sixteen-year-old but she did not want Ash now.

But she did want to marry a man she was in love with, a man who loved her back, and she was prepared to wait until she found it.

Only when she stood before her chosen bridegroom, ready to give herself to him in the sacred intimacy of marriage, would she finally be free of the scorching pain of Ash’s rejection.

But as yet she had not found that man or that love, and it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Watching her, he saw a bleakness in her eyes, and Ash felt himself filled with an unexpected compassion for her. She had been such a sweet child, so loving and giving, so sweet in her hero-worship of him. She had looked up to him as though he was a god. Childish adoration from a girl who had desperately wanted her father’s love and been denied it, that was all. He was not a god and she was no longer a child. He owed her nothing. Right?

She was not a child any more, he reminded himself. She had stopped being a child to him that fateful afternoon when she had begged him to take her virginity.

Who was the man who had taken it and her? Could she even remember his name? Given what the gossip columns had to say about her, Ash doubted it.

Sophia swallowed, knowing that she had to make one last attempt to secure his help. ‘Ash, all I want from you, all I want you to do, is behave towards me tonight as though you want me—not just to share your bed, but potentially as the wife everyone knows you must ultimately take in order to give Nailpur an heir. You are such a matrimonial prize that my father is bound to drop the Spanish prince if he thinks that there is any chance he can marry me to you. You have everything my father admires—royal blood, status and wealth.’

For once Ash was lost for words. When Sophia had said that she needed his help it had never occurred to him that she meant she wanted help of that nature for the kind of plan she had just outlined to him. She had a shrewd brain, he acknowledged. She was completely right in her assessment of her father.

‘Ash. I need you to rescue me and be my prince in shining armour just like you used to rescue me when I was little,’ Sophia continued in a voice made husky with impassioned need. ‘Do you remember that time I nearly drowned when I followed you, Alex and Hassan along that rocky cliff face?’

Against his will Ash could feel the tug her words were having on his heartstrings. ‘That was a long time ago,’ was all he permitted himself to say.

‘I still remember it,’ Sophia told him softly. ‘I was nine years old, and when I slipped into that deep pool you jumped in and rescued me. Alex laughed at me but you carried me back to safety. You made me feel safe and protected.’ Yes, he had then, she thought, but later … later he had hurt her so badly that even now … No. She mustn’t think about that tonight. She must only think of her plan, the plan she had been working on from the minute she had learned that Ash was coming to the engagement party and she had seen a possible way out of the trap that was closing round her.

Ash frowned. There it was again, that echo of vulnerability in her voice, that admission that was like a private memory, a private awareness shared only between the two of them, as though he was the only one she could allow to see beneath her shell.

Sophia let some of her pent-up breath ease out of her lungs, the release unwittingly causing her breasts to swell softly over the top of her gown.

They were fuller than they had been when she was sixteen, and even more tempting in their allure, Ash recognised, irritated with himself that he should be so aware of them. His memory supplied him with an intimate mental image of the dark crowning of her nipples, erect and hard, pushing against the fabric of the dress she had been wearing, showing him how much she desired him. That had been then, Ash reminded himself, and now he was old enough and cynical enough to know one woman’s body was much like another, and that physical desire once slaked soon evaporated, leaving him bored with the woman he had previously wanted.

Imploringly, Sophia reached out and placed her hand on Ash’s arm. Immediately his body reacted.

In an attempt to distract himself he tried to focus on her hand and not his own feelings. He looked down at where Sophia’s small hand lay against the sleeve of his expensively tailored, dark coloured Italian linen suit. Her nails were buffed to a natural sheen, and against his will his mind recorded for him the way he would feel if she were to rake those nails against his back in the intensity of her ecstasy. Sweat dampened his chest beneath his shirt from the heat pounding through his body.

‘Our father is allowing Alex to choose his own bride, so why should I have to submit to having my husband chosen for me?’ Her brother’s engagement had come as a complete surprise to her, and to Carlotta, the sibling to whom she was the closest. ‘You loved Nasreen. Why shouldn’t I be loved and love in return within my own marriage?’

The passion with which she spoke confirmed what he had already told himself about the emotional intensity she would bring to her sexual relationships. Such emotions had no place in his life any more, and he was determined that they never would. And if he could have her without those emotions? If they could enjoy each other now as the sexually experienced adults they both were? The rush of fierce male urgency that surged though his body gave him its own answer. But then there had never been any doubt about his awareness of her as a woman from the minute he had turned round tonight and seen her coming towards him.

In fact, if he was honest, Ash couldn’t remember ever before having such an immediate and insistent ache of hunger for a woman to the extent that it came between him and the cool logic of the business affairs to which he gave priority these days.

He had to distance himself from her.

‘My marriage is my business,’ he told her curtly, as he fought against his reaction to the thought of taking her to bed.

She had done it again, Sophia recognised. She had trespassed into a private place where she was not welcome. Because he still loved Nasreen?

That pain she could feel in the region of her heart was simply caused by the fact that if her father succeeded in marrying her off to this prince, she would never know what it felt like to be loved in that way. It wasn’t for any other reason—such as her wishing that it was Ash who loved her. Certainly not. She wasn’t sixteen any more. And neither was she going to let the subject drop. To her family she was the rebellious ‘difficult’ one, the one who was always challenging the status quo and pushing their father, the one who bit harder than anyone else. That was her reputation and she wasn’t going to abandon it now just because Ash was looking at her in that forbidding, icily cold way.

Nasreen. Ash wished that Sophia hadn’t mentioned her name, but she had.

He had vowed that he would love the bride who had been chosen for him, and that their marriage would be one of mutual, total faithfulness to each other. Loving the woman who had been promised to him in marriage from childhood had been a matter of great pride and honour to him, and a duty that he had taken seriously.

Orphaned as a young boy, he’d been brought up by an elderly nurse, whose stories about the great love affair between his great-grandfather and his English bride had built a responsibility within him to love and cherish the young maharani who would one day be his bride. Love mattered more than anything else, his nurse had told him. He must love his bride and she would love him back, with that love making up for the loneliness he had known as an orphan. After listening to his nurse he had believed when he married he would love his bride as completely and faithfully as his famous warrior ancestor had loved his.

Had that belief sprung from arrogance or naivety? He didn’t know. His mouth twisted in a grim expression of bitter self-contempt.

He only knew that the harsh reality of his marriage and the death of his wife—a death for which he believed that, in part at least, he had to carry a burden of blame—meant that he would never, ever again allow emotion into any intimate relationship he had with a woman. Never again would he mix sex and love. Never. Sex was a pleasure and a need, but it was just sex. He could allow himself to want a woman but he could not allow himself to love her.

CHAPTER THREE

ASH must still love Nasreen very much indeed to react to the mere mention of her as he had just done, Sophia decided.

How she hungered to be loved like that, wholly and completely, as herself and not for her royal blood. One day, one day she would find that love, Sophia assured herself fiercely, just so long as she remained free to look for it, and wasn’t forced into a marriage she didn’t want. Her passionate nature, like molten lava compressed for too long beneath unforgiving stone, pushed against the unspoken rules of never betraying any real feelings in the Santina family. Before she could stop herself she had burst out, in self-betrayal, ‘My parents don’t believe that love matters. Duty to our family name is all that counts. Especially to my father.’

The pain in her voice caught Ash’s attention. He knew her history so well that he could easily recognise the real reason for the way her voice had trembled over those telling words … my father.

What was happening to him? He had a thousand more important things on which he ought to be focusing. The negotiations he had been involved in to turn the empty, decaying palaces which had once belonged to minor, now long-dead members of his extended family into elegant hotel and spa facilities were at a vitally important stage, as was the exhibition of royal artifacts being mounted by his charity to raise money to help educate the poor of India. These should be at the forefront of his mind, not this wayward passionate and far too desirable young woman standing in front of him.

He needed to bring their conversation to an end.

‘I’m sure that your father only wants what’s best for you,’ he told her as he had done before. He knew that his words were bland and meaningless but why should he try to comfort and reassure her? Why should he care what happened to her? He didn’t, Ash assured himself.

Best for her? Wasn’t that what he had said to her all those years ago before he had walked away from her? That refusing the plea she had made to him was ‘best for her’ when what he had meant was that it was best for him.

‘The best for me?’

Ash could see the bitterness and the despair in her eyes as she shook her head in rejection of his words.

‘No!’ The second vigorous shake of her head that accompanied her denial had the dark cloud of her soft curls and waves sliding sensuously over her bare shoulders, reminding him … Reminding him of what? Of how much his body was still aching for her?

‘What my father wants is what he thinks is the best for him and for the Santina family. And as far as he’s concerned I’ve always been an unwanted and unexpected addition to the family.’ The softness of her mouth twisted painfully as she challenged him. ‘You know that’s true, Ash. You know the gossip about … about my birth as well as I do.’

It was true. He had been a boy, invited back for the school holidays with Alex after Alex’s mother had realised that he was an orphan with no family with which to spend the long holidays from their British boarding school; Sophia herself had barely started school when he had first heard the rumours that the king might not be her father.

‘You have the Santina looks,’ was all he felt able to say to her now.

‘That is what my mother said when I asked her if it was true that the English architect everyone gossiped about might be my father, but doesn’t it tell you something that never once whilst I was growing up did anyone ever suggest I should have a DNA test?’

‘What it tells me is that both your parents were so sure that you are their child that a DNA test wasn’t necessary.’

‘That’s what Carlotta says,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but then with an illegitimate child of her own and her refusal to say who the father is, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’ Normally Sophia wouldn’t have been so outspoken about Carlotta’s situation. The birth of Carlotta’s son, Luca, had meant that she, too, was out of favour with the king. They both felt they were outsiders and this had bonded them together, despite the fact that Carlotta had a twin sister.

‘And Carlotta has always been very sensible.’

Sophia gave him a wry look. ‘You call having a child out of wedlock by a man who she won’t name and, according to our father, bringing disgrace on the family sensible?’

A child—a son—only he knew how atavistically he longed for fatherhood, Ash acknowledged as he felt the familiar strike of sharply savage pain burning into him.

He had assumed when he and Nasreen had married that she would be as keen to start their family as he had been. Initially, when she had told him that she wanted to delay it because she wanted to have time alone with him he had been charmed and captivated. But then he had learned from Nasreen’s own lips the real reason why she did not want to have a child—ever—and that had led to the first of many rows between them.

To outsiders, his desire for children would be seen as the natural desire of a man in his situation to have an heir to follow him. There was an element of that there, of course—he had a duty to his inheritance, after all—but his need went deeper and was far more intensely personal than that. The loneliness he had felt as a child had made him long for a family of his own in a way that had nothing to do with being royal, and it was a need he could not turn away from or deny. One day he would marry again—it would be a marriage of practicality and not emotion, but the children that came from that marriage he would love, because that love would come naturally and not have to be forced, or pretended. As he had done with Nasreen. The bitterness of his failure to love Nasreen still brought him guilt.

‘It isn’t what one would have expected of Carlotta,’ he acknowledged.

‘No, Carlotta was always the good one. Not like me. I suppose if anyone outside the family had to choose one of us to do something disgraceful to our father they would choose me.’ Sophia pulled a face. ‘Oh, don’t bother denying it. We both know that it’s true. If it had happened to me I’d do exactly what Carlotta has done and insist on keeping my baby. No matter who tried to take it away from me.’ Her face softened as she added, ‘Little Luca is so gorgeous that sometimes I almost wish he was mine.’ There was genuine warmth and tenderness in her voice. ‘Not that my father would ever tolerate such a lapse from what’s expected from me. It would be the last straw, I expect, and he’d probably completely disown me.’

‘I doubt that your father would be trying to arrange a suitable marriage for you if he himself wasn’t convinced that you are his child, especially not to a fellow royal.’

His statement was intended to reassure her, as well as bring their conversation to a halt, but instead of doing that, it had Sophia firing up again and telling him fiercely, ‘If you think that then you don’t know my father at all. It isn’t for my benefit that he wants this marriage. It’s for his own. For the Santina name. That’s all that matters to him. Not us. Just the reputation of the Royal House of Santina. It’s always been the same, all the time we were growing up. All he ever said to us was that we must remember who and what we are. He rules us as he rules the kingdom, because he believes it is his right to do so. Our feelings, our needs, don’t matter. In fact, as far as he is concerned we ought not to have feelings at all, and that applies especially to me. He doesn’t understand me, he never has. You could help me, Ash. It wouldn’t take very much. As I’ve already told you my father would drop the Spanish prince like a hot potato if he thought he had any chance at all of marrying me off to you.’

‘I doubt very much that your father would switch his allegiance, son-in-law-wise, on the strength of seeing us together for a handful of hours at a party.’

‘Yes, he would,’ Sophia told him succinctly. ‘And I’ll prove it to you if you help me.’

Sophia’s problems were nothing to him, Ash reminded himself. He was simply here as a friend of her eldest brother. The fact that he had felt a certain amount of protective compassion for Sophia as a young girl didn’t mean anything now. After all, then he had been an idealistic young man looking forward to a future filled with love and happiness, or so he’d thought. Now he was a realist—an embittered hard-hearted realist, some might say—who knew that such dreams were exactly that. Wasn’t the truth that it was his view now that an arranged marriage worked better, lasted longer and fitted the purpose it was designed for—the production of an heir and the continuation of a family name—than so-called love? Wouldn’t his own second marriage be exactly that? After all, one only had to look at Sophia’s parents to see the strength of such a union. Whether or not the rumours about Queen Zoe and the young architect were true, their marriage remained solid, as did their shared dedication to preserving the Santina family name. If Sophia thought that her father would ever sacrifice that to allow her to make a marriage of her own choice then in his opinion she was wrong. Besides, she was grown-up now, and could take care of herself. And he didn’t want to muddy the waters of diplomatic relations with a poorly timed flirtation.

‘I don’t see the point in us discussing this any further, Sophia.’ He pushed back the sleeve of his dinner jacket to look at his watch.

He had extraordinarily sexy hands and wrists, Sophia acknowledged, and the warm tone of his skin only emphasised that. For months after he had rejected her she had soothed herself to sleep at night imagining those hands on her body in a caress that was warm and loving, as well as sensually erotic. The pain of the sudden sense of loss that swept her locked her breath in her throat.

‘I have to leave soon,’ Ash told her. ‘If you spoke to your father about your feelings I am sure that he will give you more time to get to know the man he has chosen for you.’

The fierce shrug of her slender, tanned shoulders in a gesture of denial and despair caused the strapless top of her dress to slip downwards, so that the shadow of the areole of her nipples was clearly visible to him. Desire hot and feral shot through him. What was the matter with him? It was as though his body was taking delight in deliberately disobeying the orders he had given it, as though his own flesh was actively delighting in punishing him by making him … want her?