Kitabı oku: «The Santina Crown Collection», sayfa 5

CHAPTER FIVE

THE king had put him in a completely untenable position and Ash could see from Sophia’s expression that she had heard what her father had said. For himself he could feel the ferocity of the opposing emotional claims at war within him. His pride baulked at the thought of anyone, even a fellow royal, dictating to him what he had to do. Yet his own sense of duty to his heritage, to his friendship with Sophia’s brother, and in a sense to Sophia herself, to save her from the disgrace and humiliation she would suffer if he refused to marry her, told him what he must do.

‘My father doesn’t mean what he just said,’ Sophia told Ash unsteadily. Her father’s statement had shocked her, but what had shocked her even more was the swift pain it gave her to have to contrast her youthful dreams of what marriage to Ash would be like and the harsh reality of what was happening now. Then she had dreamed romantically of a relationship filled with love and happiness. The bitter taste of the ashes of those foolish dreams clogged her throat. ‘We can’t marry, Ash.’

‘We don’t have any choice,’ Ash responded brutally.

‘I want to marry for love.’

‘You lost the right to make that choice when you hid yourself away on my plane.’

His words hurt, but hadn’t she told herself all those years ago that she would never allow Ash to hurt her again, and that she would be completely immune to him? Immune to him? Just as she had been in the cabin of his plane. It should be her face that was burning but instead to her chagrin it was her body that was engulfed by heat at the memory her thoughts had brought her.

‘I lost it the minute I was born,’ she countered tartly, but Ash made no response.

Looking at him and seeing the resolution etched into his hard expression, the apprehension she had felt earlier turned into a much stronger fear. Just as those unwanted shocking moments on the plane had shown her a side of herself and the power of her own sensuality that had overwhelmed her, what was happening now was showing her a side to Ash that as a child and then a teenager she had never considered. As she had recognised earlier, the man in front of her was Ash the royal prince, the leader of his people, a man who would allow nothing to stand in his way of doing what he thought was right for the responsibility he owed to his people. Right now, she suspected, that included her, hence that icy trickle of fear that had just run down her spine.

A fear that was reinforced when Ash told her coldly, ‘I am in the middle of some very important business negotiations with people to whom the morals of those with whom they do deals are very important. If I don’t marry you my reputation as a man of honour will be damaged. I cannot allow that to happen. I have a duty to my ancestors—and more importantly, to my people. Their future, the education of their children and their childrens’ futures depend to a large extent on me bringing more money into our local economy and keeping it there to provide better opportunities for them. All that will be prejudiced if it becomes known, as it most assuredly will, that your father has insisted that I marry you and I have refused. That is the way it is amongst people of our inherited status and blood, Sophia. You know that as well as I do.’

Every word he said confirmed what she had already recognised. Now she knew exactly what his priorities were and they certainly weren’t her feelings.

Ash turned away from Sophia and looked out of the window.

This was the last situation he wanted, but he had no choice. The honour of his name had to come before his own personal feelings. And he had to marry someone. In the eyes of the outer world, their outer world, his marriage to Sophia would be seen as a businesslike and wholly acceptable decision. He had to have an heir. He had always known that. An heir created with Sophia in a dutiful coming together for that purpose? For an unguarded second he remembered how it had been between them on board his plane. He tried to close down on that memory but it was too late. Without looking at her he heard himself telling her more openly than his need to control his reactions liked, ‘We may both know that a marriage between us is not what either of us would have chosen, but since we have no choice, at least on the evidence of last night, we will share a mutually pleasurable sex life. And as I am sure you will know from your own experience, good sex enhances the lives of those who share that good sex.’

Good sex? Experience? Was this what her dreams of a marriage grounded in true love had been reduced to?

A buzz on the outer door to the apartment halted him momentarily to say, ‘This will be my appointment. Once it is over I shall set in motion the arrangements for our marriage. Under the circumstances, the sooner and the more quietly it takes place, the better. From your father’s point of view and our own, presenting the world with a fait accompli will bring an end to the current gossip and speculation far more speedily than a press announcement that we are to get married in the future. Once we are wed we will retire to Nailpur. I have business to attend to there, and the privacy it will give us will allow at least some of the gossip to die down. When you return to society you will do so as my wife.’

‘And the mother of your child?’ Sophia asked him, dry-mouthed.

‘Yes. If life chooses to bless us with your speedy conception.’ He paused and then gave her a look that stripped her pride bare as he told her, ‘Let there be no doubt about one thing, though, Sophia, and that is that from now on you will behave in a way that befits a married woman, who is faithful to her marriage vows and her husband.’

‘A marriage that is empty of love, and to a husband I have not chosen for myself?’

‘It is as a direct result of your own behaviour that we are now in this situation,’ Ash stated coldly. ‘And as for love, it is the last thing I will be looking for in our marriage—or outside it. For the sake of the children I hope this marriage will be one they can respect and one which does not dishonour either them or their family name.’

So much pride, so much importance placed on duty, and no place left for love. But he had loved Nasreen. And buried his heart and his capacity to love with her?

Why should she care? She had her pride, too, and it certainly would not allow her to want Ash’s love. Before she could comment on the flat cold statement he had just delivered, there was a brief knock on the door and a member of Ash’s staff entered.

‘Highness, I am sorry to disturb you but Mr Alwar Singh is here with his accountant and solicitor.’

‘Thank you, Kamir.’ Nodding his head, Ash went towards the open door, saying as he did so, ‘Mr Singh, please come in,’ and extending his hand to the smartly suited middle-age man who was shown into the room. He was followed by an elegant dark haired woman dressed in a beautiful salwar kameez, and another business-suited man.

‘I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Please allow me to introduce you to my fiancée and wife-to-be, Princess Sophia of Santina, before we begin our meeting.’ Ash turned towards Sophia, smiling at her as he did so. But Sophia could see that the smile did not quite reach his eyes. Formality and the business of protocol and good manners were no strangers to her, and it was easy for her to step forward to accept the good wishes of Mr Singh and his companions.

She knew why Ash had introduced her as he had, of course. He had just made their marriage to each other official and placed it in the public domain, and now there was no going back from that declaration.

‘Kamir, please ask the kitchen staff to serve tea in my office,’ he instructed the waiting staff member before turning to her and saying politely, ‘Please excuse us, Sophia.’

‘We shall try not to keep you apart for too long,’ Mr Singh told her with a smile as the group departed.

She was alone in the clinical vastness of the now-silent room. Alone with her sick dread of the emptiness of the future that lay ahead of her and her despair at the loss of the goal she had promised herself she would one day achieve.

Her glance fell on her mobile and she remembered her sister’s message. Numbly she picked up her phone and quickly texted Carlotta. Am to marry Ash. And then she switched her phone off. She had too much on her mind to dare to allow herself the interruption and complication of other people’s views and input into the situation, even someone as close to her as Carlotta.

The door opened. She looked up quickly, her heart racing, only it wasn’t Ash; it was a staff member who had come to ask her if she would care for tea or coffee.

‘Coffee, please.’ She thanked him, and went back to her lonely thoughts.

In his office, even though he was doing his best to focus completely and only on what Alwar Singh had to say to him about their proposed business venture, Ash knew that in reality his thoughts and his concentration were divided. He was committed now publicly, as well as privately. Sophia would be his wife. His body responded with a surge of male heat. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake again, though. This marriage would be based on practicality and the need for him to have an heir. There would be no love involved. And no question of Sophia continuing with her present hedonistic lifestyle.

Alwar Singh’s accountant was running through some of the figures that would be involved in the transformation of the currently derelict palace into a world-class hotel.

‘You will, of course, have a forty percent share in the hotel.’

‘Fifty percent,’ Ash checked her firmly. ‘That was our original agreement.’

‘It is Mr Singh who will be putting in most of the money and bearing the larger part of the risk.’

‘Not so,’ Ash contradicted her. ‘As Maharaja of Nailpur I have a responsibility towards my people and towards the cultural inheritance left to me by my ancestors. If the unique historical value of the palace is damaged in any way by its conversion to a hotel, something irreplaceable will be destroyed, not just for the present but for the future. That is my share of the risk.’

After the meeting had concluded, his visitors left and Ash turned his concentration to the matter of making the necessary legal and practical arrangements for his marriage.

In the drawing room of the apartment, Sophia threw aside the English language newspaper she had been attempting to read. Freed from the powerful determination of Ash’s presence her own independence was beginning to reassert itself. Her independence or her fear? What did she have to fear? She would only need to fear marriage to Ash if she was still vulnerable to him through her emotions, through the love she had once had for him, and that wasn’t the case. It was simply her desire to control her own life and to make her own decisions that was filling her with this increasing sense of urgency and need to escape. And why shouldn’t she escape? Why shouldn’t she prove to herself that she could be strong enough to claim her right to her freedom of choice. She already knew that there was no point in trying to make Ash understand how she felt. Her feelings didn’t matter to him.

The staff member who had brought her coffee had returned and was removing the tray. Before she could change her mind, Sophia told him, ‘I’d like my case, please.’

The man nodded his head and withdrew.

She was running away again, she knew, but Ash had made it plain that he intended to marry her, leaving her no alternative.

Ash had just finished putting in place the arrangements he had needed to make when one of his staff came into the office.

‘The Princess Sophia, she has asked for her suitcase, Highness,’ he told Ash.

Sophia swung round when the door opened, her heart banging into her ribs when she saw that it wasn’t the man with her suitcase who had come in but Ash himself. One look at his face told her that he knew what she planned to do.

Sophia took a deep breath. Very well, she would just have to make it clear to him that she wasn’t going to give up her freedom.

‘I don’t want to marry you, Ash,’ she told him. ‘I don’t think it’s the right thing for either of us.’

Ash could feel the fierce surge of his anger slamming into him.

‘You are supposed to be an adult, Sophia, but you are behaving like a child—a child so selfish and self-obsessed that she thinks only of herself.’

His accusation appalled her.

‘If you refuse to marry me now after I have introduced you publicly as my fiancée, the damage that will do not just to my role as the leader of my people but to those people themselves will be impossible to repair. Here in India we place great store by certain values—honour, duty, responsibility and the respect we have for our forebears, and what we owe to them in terms of the way we live our own lives.

‘You are the one who is responsible for the situation we are in, and you have a duty to that responsibility.’

He was right. What he was saying was true, Sophia recognised. With his coldly angry words he had drawn for her a picture of herself that she didn’t like, and that filled her with shame.

She gave a small jerky acknowledgement of her head, and told him shakily, ‘Very well.’

She looked so alone and vulnerable, so in need of someone to protect her. Against his will the desire to comfort her invaded him, compelling him to take a step towards her. Abruptly he stopped himself. He had to think of his people and his duty. He had to put them first.

‘You give me your word that you agree that this marriage between us must take place?’ he pressed her.

‘Yes,’ Sophia agreed. Her mouth was so dry that the word was a papery rustle of sound.

‘Good. Normally it takes thirty days after one registers one’s wish to marry in a civil ceremony before that marriage can take place, but in our case that requirement has been waived and our civil marriage will take place tomorrow.’

Tomorrow? Sophia’s heart jerked against her ribs.

‘I have informed your father of our plans. We have agreed that in lieu of the formal marriage ceremony we might have been expected to have, a post-wedding reception will be held later on in the year, either in Nailpur or Santina.’

Ash reached into his pocket for the box he had picked up on his way back to the room, telling Sophia as he handed it to her, ‘I have this for you. The ring is a family heirloom and may need to be altered.’

Sophia stared at the imposing-looking velvet-covered box with a crest embossed on it. Taking it from him, and determined not to let him see how much it hurt her that he wasn’t even attempting to make the romantic gesture of opening the box and placing the ring on her finger himself, it was all she could do to pretend to be enthusiastic. But as she opened the box she gasped at what she knew was the largest and most flawless diamond she had ever seen. Pear shaped and on a thin platinum band it had to be priceless. A family heirloom, he had called it. Did that mean …?

‘Was this your first wife’s engagement ring?’ she asked him, her voice and her body both stiff with the distaste of being second best.

Guilt and anger dug into Ash’s insides like red-hot wire. ‘No. It belonged to my great-grandmother.’

He had never offered Nasreen his great-grandmother’s ring, a ring given to her by his great-grandfather as a symbol of their love. Nasreen had told him that she longed to wear the enormous emerald ring that was part of another suite of jewellery, and against his better judgement he had allowed her to have it. Against his better judgement because it was a formal piece meant to be worn with the rest of the set.

Somehow it seemed right that Sophia should have the ring that had been a gift of love. His own thoughts made him frown.

Thankful that she wasn’t going to be wearing Nasreen’s ring, Sophia removed the ring from its box and slipped it on to her own ring finger, surprised to discover that it fitted her perfectly.

It fitted her and suited her, Ash recognised, as he looked down at where his great-grandmother’s ring shone on Sophia’s finger as though it had found its rightful place.

‘Alex texted me to ask what is going on,’ he told her, changing the subject. ‘Your father obviously told him that we are getting married. I should warn you that I’ve told him that meeting up again at his engagement party made us both realise that we had feelings for each other that we couldn’t ignore.’

‘Alex thinks that we’re in love?’

‘It seemed preferable to telling him the truth. He and I may be old friends, but you are still his sister. I felt it was wiser all round to allow him to think that our marriage is based on a mutual desire to be together, which brings me to another point. Having told him that, I think that in public it will be for the best if we behave as though we want to be together. I have no wish for our marriage to become the subject of any ongoing gossip and speculation, and given that your father publicly announced your engagement to another man, the press are bound to be curious. The discovery that our feelings for each other are stronger than mere friendship will provide the necessary explanation. And that goes for anything you might say to your family.’

‘But if my father has told them that he has insisted that you marry me …’

‘He hasn’t, and he agrees with me that the sudden discovery of our love for each other will provide an acceptable excuse for him to give to the prince. In the eyes of the world this marriage will work, Sophia. Make no mistake. I am determined about that.’

It was over, done. Now, standing here in this anonymous public building that was the marriage registry Ash had chosen, in the eyes of the law she had become his wife. It had been a civil ceremony so plain and direct that against all her expectations she had found in the exchange of the words that had committed them to each other a meaningful simplicity that had touched her emotions. Instead of feeling deprived because she was not having the exotic glamour of a three-day-long traditional Indian wedding, or the pomp and ceremony of being married in the cathedral on Santina, during the ceremony she had thought of all those couples who had made the simple commitment they were making out of love for each other. And that was the cause of the sharp up-rush of pain she felt? Yes, of course it was. What else could it be? It certainly wasn’t because she was still foolish enough to dream of being loved by Ash.

They had signed the registry, their signatures had been witnessed, and Ash had told her that her father intended to break the news to their family that their marriage had now taken place later that evening.

‘Carlotta will say that I should have waited.’

‘And you will tell her that our love for each other meant that we couldn’t.’

To step out into the colourful bustle of the busy street as Ash’s wife felt almost surreal. There had been no couture wedding gown for her, just a simple white linen dress, its colour drawing a look from Ash that had told her how little a claim she had to its virginal purity.

It was too late now for her to change her mind. They were married. Desperate to distract herself from the anxiety and the feelings of being unloved and totally alone in the world that were beginning to engulf her, Sophia looked around at her surroundings once their car had pulled away from the registry office. It would be impossible not to be excited and entranced by the verve and colour that was India, or to have one’s heart captivated by it, she acknowledged. She desperately wanted to share with Ash her wonderment and belief that she would very quickly grow to love her new home, and to ask him questions about the city and of course about his home of Nailpur, but she had to remember that this was a dynastic marriage of convenience. Ash did not want any kind of emotional bonding or sharing between them. All Ash wanted from her was her sexual fidelity and an heir.

‘We need to get back to the apartment,’ Ash told Sophia. ‘We’re flying to Nailpur in a couple of hours.’

A new text beeped into Sophia’s phone. From her mother this time and not Carlotta. Darling, your father and I are so pleased about you and Ash. I remember how you used to adore him when you were young. Be happy.

Be happy? That was impossible.

Another text had arrived, this one from Carlotta, demanding, Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?

Hitting Reply, Sophia wrote defiantly through the emotion threatening to close up her throat. It’s a dream come true. Have loved Ash forever and couldn’t be happier.

Couldn’t be happier, she had told Carlotta, but wasn’t the truth that she couldn’t have been more unhappy?

Ash stared out of the window. He had done the right thing, the only thing given the circumstances, in subjecting his decision to exactly the same logical tests he would have subjected a vitally important business deal, given the development of a situation that meant that decisive action had to be taken and quickly. Yes, he might have had to make the best of a bad job as it were, but his decision had passed those tests.

So why did he have a niggling feeling that there was something important that he had failed to consider? Why did he feel this wary sense of some kind of danger from which he should retreat? Ash knew the cause of his disquiet perfectly well. It could be traced back to those minutes in bed with Sophia on the plane when he had come so close to relinquishing his self-control. Of almost glorying in succumbing to his own need to abandon that self-control for the sake of the pleasure he had known it would give him to take her without it. That would have been an act as reckless in its way and with potentially as far-reaching effects further down the line as if he had had full sex without using any protection. If he had given in to that need, if he had allowed his desire for Sophia to breach his self-control then … But he had not. The steward’s timely interruption had seen to that, and now that he was aware of that possible weakness within him he was in a far better position to deal with it. And he would deal with it.