Kitabı oku: «The Scandalous Collection», sayfa 21
CHAPTER EIGHT
HASSAN had dealt with sickness before. He’d seen men spill their guts up after battle and afterwards lie grey-faced and sweating. But he’d never witnessed it in a beautiful young woman in her prime and he thought how tiny and frail she suddenly looked. Overwhelmed with remorse at the harshness of his words, he carried her to the tiny bathroom and then held back her hair from her face as she retched. Eventually, she stopped and slumped against his chest, exhausted, her eyes closed.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually.
Stricken with remorse, he shook his head. ‘It is not you who should be sorry, it is me,’ he grated. ‘I am responsible for your sickness. I should not have said those things to you.’
At this, her eyelashes fluttered open to reveal ice-blue eyes which were slightly bloodshot, and to his astonishment, a faint smile was lifting the corners of her lips.
‘Your words were rather wounding,’ she conceded. ‘But not quite powerful enough to induce nausea, Hassan. That’s something which happens to lots of pregnant women, no matter what their circumstances.’
‘You have been sick before this?’ he demanded.
Ella swallowed, feeling much too weak to be able to maintain a stoic attitude. ‘Most days.’
‘Most days? But this is not good! This is why you are looking so thin and so pale.’
‘The doctor says the baby will be fine.’
There was a pause. ‘You have seen a doctor?’
Ella knew that she ought to move. That it was bizarre, ridiculous and inappropriate to be lying slumped against the man who had said such cruel things to her. But the stupid thing was that she didn’t want to go anywhere. He felt warm and he felt strong. Most important of all, he felt safe. ‘Seeing a doctor is what normally happens when a woman gets pregnant, Hassan.’
‘And who is this doctor?’
‘He’s my GP from the local health centre and he’s very good.’
Hassan tensed, his apprehension eclipsing the sudden realisation that her back was pressing against his groin.
‘A local GP cannot be charged with caring for the progeny of the sheikh,’ he said, and then saw her eyelids flutter to a close again. ‘But this is not the time to talk about it. For now, you need to rest.’
Her protest died on her lips as once again he picked her up and carried her through to her bedroom, though she couldn’t miss his faint double take when he saw a series of charcoal drawings she’d done of Izzy lining the walls. They were entitled ‘Izzy Dressing’ and they showed her sister pulling on various items of clothing. They were less shocking than most things you’d see in a municipal art gallery, but that didn’t stop Hassan’s mouth from flattening critically.
He put her down on the bed, banking the pillows up behind her, his black eyes raking over her.
‘What can I do for you?’ he demanded. ‘What can I get you to make you feel better?’
Stupidly, she felt like asking him to hold her again. To cradle her in his arms where, for just a brief while, she had felt safe and cosseted. And how pathetic was that? She struggled to sit up. ‘I don’t want anything.’
‘Sure?’
The unexpected softness in his voice made her hesitate, especially as her throat felt scorched and dry from all that vomiting. ‘There’s some flat cola in the fridge.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Flat cola?’
‘It helps the sickness.’
‘Right.’ Grimly, he made his way to her refrigerator, an ancient-looking beast of a thing which contained a lump of cheese, some wilting salad and a bottle of cola, minus the top. His expression was no less thunderous when he took the unappetising brown liquid back to her, and held the glass up to her lips while she sipped from it.
It was an unexpectedly considerate gesture, powerfully intimate, and Ella felt some of her strength returning. ‘You make a good nurse,’ she joked.
‘And you make an appalling patient,’ he retorted. ‘If you think that you can sustain yourself and a growing baby on that pitiful excuse for food in your kitchen.’
‘I don’t have a lot of time to go shopping,’ she defended, and then realised that she had walked into a trap of her own making. ‘But all that will change, of course.’
‘How?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the magic wand you’re going to wave? Who’s going to help you, Ella?’
‘My family.’ But even to her own ears, the words sounded unconvincing. She knew that Ben would help her in a moment and yet she baulked at the thought of running to him, terrified of disappointing her beloved big brother and becoming a burden to him. Besides, Ben lived on an island which was miles away.
And what of her business—how was she going to cope with the day-to-day running of it? Her celebrity clients expected a super-willowy boss, with smiling lips covered in her trademark scarlet gloss. Not some tired and lumbering pregnant woman who wasn’t even with the father of her baby, a pregnant woman who was finding it increasingly difficult to stay upright without wanting to fall asleep. Or be sick.
‘No, most definitely not your family. I am not having this baby influenced by the Jackson family,’ said Hassan unequivocably.
Her hackles began to rise. ‘You can’t stop me.’
No, he couldn’t, and he recognised that to try to push her would only make her stubbornly stand her ground. Far better, surely, to appeal to the innate sense of greed which lay at the heart of every woman? Greed which he had seen in many forms ever since his powerful body had reached adulthood and the vast resources of his inheritance had become available to him. He put the half-empty glass of cola on the bedside table and leaned forward by a fraction, seeing her ice-blue eyes widen automatically.
‘But what if I were to wave the magic wand instead?’ he questioned slowly.
‘By making yourself disappear from my life? Now that really would be a wish come true!’
How indomitable she was, he thought. And what remarkable spirit she would pass on to their child! Unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘By listening to reason.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’re a reasonable man?’
‘I can be.’ He paused. ‘What if I arranged for someone to stand in for you at work while you’re pregnant? Someone who would ably assist the woman who was staring at me so intently when I came to see you today.’
‘Daisy,’ she said automatically. ‘And I can’t afford to just hire someone in.’
‘Maybe not, but I can. And not just anyone. The very best in the business—someone of your choosing, of course—can be yours for the taking.’
She stared at him, her heart beginning to race, unable to deny that she was tempted by his offer. How easy it was for him, she thought. He could just chuck money at a problem and the problem would go away. What must it be like, to be that powerful? ‘And what’s the catch?’
‘The catch is that you let me look after you.’
‘I know I just said you’d make a good nurse, but I wasn’t being serious.’
But even as she attempted the poor joke, Hassan could hear the lack of conviction in her voice. Sensing weakness, he moved in for the kill. ‘Think about it, Ella. You can spend your days doing exactly as you please. You can read books you never have time for. You can relax and watch movies.’ His eyes strayed upwards to the drawings of her sister and, again, his mouth flattened. ‘You could even do some drawing, if you wanted. Maybe it would be good to have time to do those kinds of things for a change?’
Ella felt temptation grow as she considered his offer. Time to paint? Or to do nothing at all? To lie in bed in the morning until this wretched sickness had passed? She imagined not having to dress for work, to slip on the high heels and slap on the makeup. She’d worked since the age of sixteen and she couldn’t imagine not working, and yet there was no denying that the idea appealed to her.
But she felt like a bit like a starving stray cat who was too scared to reach out to take the morsels of delicious food which were being offered to her.
‘It’s very generous of you,’ she said slowly.
Hassan allowed himself a charitable smile. ‘I can afford to be generous.’
She swallowed. ‘And what … you’d come and see me from time to time, would you? Whenever you’re in London?’
His eyes narrowed. Surely she had understood the main thrust behind his offer—that in return for rescuing her, she would come under his control? He looked at the question in her eyes. It seemed not. ‘But that is not my plan,’ he said softly. ‘I have a country to run and many pressing matters. We have only just finished fighting a war. I won’t be in London and neither will you, for you will fly back to Kashamak with me, just as soon as your replacement can be appointed.’
Ella looked at him blankly. ‘Kashamak?’ she said faintly.
‘The land that I rule which produces fine warriors and great poets,’ he said proudly. ‘And the child that you carry must know all about their heritage, Ella.’ There was a pause. ‘And so must you.’
Yet deep down, he suspected she would find his land much too harsh for her Western sensibilities. What if prolonged exposure to Kashamak made her want to escape from its restrictions and return to the freedoms of her old life? What if she discovered that motherhood was not for her?
A sudden and audacious thought occurred to him.
She could leave the child behind. Leave him to care for that child, as his own father had cared for him. Because didn’t he know better than anyone that you didn’t need a mother in order to survive?
Hassan’s heart began to beat with an exultant kind of excitement as he realised what lay within his grasp. That perhaps this was the answer to his prayers. The heir he knew his people wanted and yet which, so far, he had been unwilling to provide, because the idea of marriage had been abhorrent to him. But now he was being forced to marry, wasn’t he? And that completely changed the playing field.
Ella watched as his body tensed and wondered what had caused his face to darken like that. ‘But I might not want to go and live in Kashamak,’ she objected. ‘And then what?’
‘I think you’ll find that you don’t really have any choice in the matter,’ he snapped, because the alternative was unthinkable, especially now that he had glimpsed the possibilities. The idea of his child being tutored in the ways of the world by the Jackson family would simply not be allowed to happen. He forced his voice to soften as he looked down at her. ‘Your welfare is my number-one concern, Ella, and I cannot monitor it if you are thousands of miles away.’
She heard words which sounded as empty as the look in his eyes and a shiver of trepidation whispered its way over her skin. Her welfare was his ‘number-one concern,’ was it? Sure it was! She didn’t believe him. Not for a minute. This felt more about possession than anything else. His child and therefore his woman.
His hawk-like features looked cruel in that moment, almost triumphant. How she wished she could just pull the bedcovers over her head and make him and all her problems go away.
But he was right. She didn’t have a choice. Not really. She was pregnant with the sheikh’s baby and she was going to have to accommodate that fact, as were other people. For the first time she thought how this piece of news would go down in Hassan’s homeland and she looked up into his flinty eyes.
‘Won’t your people find it odd if you just turn up with a Western woman who’s so obviously pregnant?’
‘They would find it completely unacceptable,’ he agreed silkily, realising that there was only one solution to their predicament. One which would inevitably mean a deeper association with the outrageous Jackson clan. Instinctively, he baulked against it, but what choice did he have other than to accept it? He looked down into her ice-blue eyes. ‘Which is why we must be married immediately.’
Married? Ella stared at him, her heart beginning to beat very fast. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Not last time I looked.’ He saw the tension in her face. ‘What’s the matter, Ella, were you holding out for Mr Right?’
She thought of her father’s multiple marriages and the women whose hearts he had trampled along the way and she shook her head. ‘I’m too old to believe in fairy tales,’ she said.
His cynical smile mirrored hers. ‘Me too. So you see, maybe we are more alike than you think, since neither of us have any illusions to destroy. Maybe that makes us the ideal couple to get married, if the purpose of marriage is to legitimise children. And my country tends to be rather liberal about divorce. If you find living in Kashamak to be unbearable, I will give you your freedom, once the child is born.’
Ella’s teeth dug into the fleshy cushion of her bottom lip, because his offer of an easy divorce seemed to make a complete mockery of his marriage proposal. Yet wasn’t his suggestion the only thing which made sense in this whole crazy situation? That there was an escape route all mapped out if she chose to take it—and frankly, she couldn’t imagine not taking it.
It was just his arrogant certainty that he could just snap his fingers and she’d fall in with his plans which made her want to rebel. And so did something else—the very real fear that going to a faraway country to live with Hassan would throw up all kinds of new problems. Alone with a man who seemed to despise her … How on earth could she feel comfortable about something like that?
‘And what if I refuse?’ she challenged quietly. ‘What then?’
Hassan stared at her. Was she seriously pitting her will against his? It seemed that she was, judging by the sudden determined tilt of her chin, and he forced himself to remember that she was pregnant, and volatile. ‘Don’t make it hard on yourself, Ella,’ he said silkily. ‘Why not sit back and let me take care of you?’
His words were like soft but very effective weapons aimed straight at the most vulnerable part of her and Ella felt temptation wash over her. Someone to take care of her. Because when had that ever happened before? She thought about the struggle of doing this pregnancy on her own. Of lumbering into work every day on the train and worrying like crazy about money.
And then she thought about this man who had put her in this predicament. She saw the glitter of his black eyes as they observed her. Would it be so terrible to let him take over, to use the abundant power at his fingertips to make her life a little easier? A wave of nausea washed over her and briefly she closed her eyes to let it pass. But it had the effect of emphasising her general weakness and, with a heavy sigh, she nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll marry you.’
Hassan looked down into her ashen face as he registered her grudging tone and the briefest of smiles glimmered on his lips. Whoever would have predicted it?
That after years of women plotting and scheming to get him to commit, his eventual bride should consent to marry him with such obvious reluctance.
CHAPTER NINE
‘SO YOU really are called Cinderella?’
Ella had been staring out of the car window at the stark beauty of the desert speeding by, but she turned now to look at the robed figure by her side. Her new husband. She might have thought she was in the middle of a particularly bizarre dream were it not for the faint weakness and queasiness she was still experiencing from her pregnancy. But she dredged up a rueful smile from somewhere as she turned to answer Hassan’s question. ‘I’m afraid I am. Apparently, my father told my mother that giving me such a name meant I’d be bound to marry a prince.’
‘Then for once, your father was right,’ commented Hassan drily. ‘I am rarely surprised, but I certainly was when the registrar read out your full name during the marriage ceremony.’
‘I wasn’t planning on announcing it,’ she admitted, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘It’s something I tend to keep quiet about, but the registrar insisted that I declare it.’
‘You must have been teased about it a lot at school,’ he observed.
‘Oh, being a Jackson was enough to ensure that. Having a ridiculous Christian name didn’t really make any difference.’
But her airy assertion didn’t quite ring true and Hassan surveyed her with thoughtful eyes. He’d dismissed her as nothing but a playful flirt when she’d first introduced herself with the storybook name. He’d never have dreamt in a million years that she was telling the truth. And yet it had fitted his stereotypical views of women to think of her as a sexy and teasing minx, rather than this rather solemn mother-to-be who now wore his wedding band. He let his gaze drift over the paleness of her skin and felt a sudden beat of anxiety. ‘The car is not too bumpy for you? You don’t feel sick?’
‘No sicker than I was feeling back in London, and it’s nothing to do with the car, or the road. Why, it’s so smooth that you’d hardly believe we were speeding along in the middle of a desert!’
‘Probably because you imagined the roads of Kashamak would be primitive dirt tracks, potted with holes and barely passable because of camels? Didn’t you once say something predictable about camels?’
‘Maybe I was a little guilty of that,’ she said as she stared down at the shiny new wedding ring on her finger, still dazed by the speed of everything that had happened. Still unable to believe that the dark-faced man sitting at her side really was her husband, as well as the father of her child.
Had she been out of her mind to agree to their hasty marriage, or simply too dazed by sickness and general worries to protest about the future? And hadn’t her decision to wed him been made easier by his offer of an ‘easy’ divorce, should she want one?
She sat back against the soft leather of the car seat. ‘I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got here, but so far everything has defied all my expectations.’
The insights as to how her new life would be had begun the moment she’d boarded the luxury jet on a private airfield just north of London. The flight had been seamless and further than she’d ever flown before. With mainland Europe far behind them, they’d skirted the edges of the beautiful Caspian Sea before coming in to land at the airport in Samaltyn, the capital city of Kashamak.
Protocol had been discreet on the plane, which had been empty save for them and the crew members who outnumbered them. But the moment they’d landed and Ella had heard the national anthem being played, she had realised that she was actually in the company of a real-live king.
While she—unbelievable as it seemed—was his new queen. A queen kitted out in lavish silks which covered every bit of available flesh, except for her face and hands.
Their marriage had taken place in the Kashamak Embassy in central London, with only two diplomats as their witnesses and no advance publicity given out, not even to their respective families. Hassan had been adamant he didn’t want an international frenzy with swarms of paparazzi clustering around to take photos of the sheikh’s new Western queen.
But Ella knew this wasn’t the only reason he had insisted on no fuss and why a quiet statement about their union had been issued only this morning, just as they were about to board their jet. She suspected he was terrified of all the negative publicity which always surrounded the Jackson family. And if that was the case, then she was forced to concede that he might be right.
She could just imagine how her family might have sabotaged their wedding day. Her father boasting that his daughter was marrying one of the most powerful men in the Middle East. Her mother playing her habitual doormat role beside him. And Izzy—heaven forbid—trying to sing her congratulations.
But Ella was also afraid that one of her sisters might have discovered the truth behind her bright smile and realised the heavy burden she was carrying. That Hassan was only marrying her to stamp his mark of possession on their unborn baby.
And now they were travelling in a sleek air-conditioned car towards Hassan’s palace, on roads which were as flat as millponds. She felt … well, she felt as displaced as most women would feel if they were newly pregnant and leaving behind everything they knew. But most women in her position would have the comfort of knowing that they were loved and desired, instead of regarded as some sort of royal incubator.
Her actions instinctively mirroring her turbulent emotions, she moved her hand to let it rest on her stomach.
‘You are experiencing discomfort?’ questioned Hassan instantly. ‘Some kind of pain?’
She shook her head, because she had decided that she was going to be strong. She wasn’t going to start whingeing every time she had a little ache or wave of sickness. ‘Hassan, I’m fine.’
He stared at the fingers which were curled protectively over her stomach, wondering when this would all start to feel real. As if it was happening to him and not to someone else. He stared at the unfamiliar bump and tried to make sense of it. ‘The baby is kicking?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘When?’
Her fingers tightened around the still unfamiliar swell. ‘Any day now, I hope.’
‘How can you know all these things?’
His dark, gleaming eyes were curious and Ella thought at that moment how gorgeous he looked, and yet how unreachable too. His traditional Kashmakian robes made him look so darkly foreign and yet the flowing silk emphasised the honed body beneath, mocking her with memories of that snatched and forbidden night they’d spent together. The first and only time they’d made love …
Blocking out the sudden flare of desire which shimmered over her skin and the inevitable questions that raised, she attempted to answer his question.
‘There’s a chart which you can download from the internet and it tells you all the things you can expect,’ she explained carefully. ‘Movement starts around sixteen weeks.’
‘And will you let me feel my child when it kicks, Ella?’ he questioned suddenly. ‘Will you let me lay my hand on your belly so that I can feel it move?’
Despite the cool of the air conditioning, Ella’s cheeks grew heated at the intimacy of his question. Their night of passion had happened so long ago that sometimes it seemed as if it was nothing but a distant dream. And the more time passed, the more unreal it seemed. Because there had been no revisiting of that passion since that night. No sense that he wanted to touch her in any way at all.
So if he laid his hand on her stomach, would that start her yearning for a greater intimacy altogether? Did he still want her in that way? she wondered.
‘Yes, of course you can,’ she answered quietly, knowing that she couldn’t possibly refuse him. Not just because he was the baby’s father, but because he’d done so much to help her. And for once in her life she had just sat back and let him help with a passivity which she put down to her pregnancy and to the accompanying nausea which still hit her in waves.
Somehow, Hassan had produced a clutch of women who were eager to step into her shoes at work and Ella had interviewed every one of them. And right now, back in England, Daisy was working quite happily alongside her replacement, while the business was ticking along just fine.
But there were more things to occupy her mind other than the business she’d left behind. Ahead she could see an enormous and elaborate pair of golden gates dazzling in the sunshine and, beyond those, neat lines of palm trees bordering a bright rectangle of water. A vast creamy-gold building rose up in the distance—a structure so wide and so grand that, once again, she wanted to pinch herself to convince herself she wasn’t dreaming.
They had reached the royal palace at last, and suddenly all her doubts came skimming to the surface, making her stomach churn with fear. Had she forgotten who she was? Just one of the notorious Jacksons whose father had kept the British press entertained for years. How could she go from being mocked and ridiculed to wearing a crown on her head and carrying it off with any degree of confidence?
‘Hassan, I can’t do this,’ she croaked. ‘What if your people won’t accept me?’
Hearing the crack in her voice, Hassan turned, trying to see her as others would see her for the first time. She was wearing an exquisite Kashamak robe in bridal colours of deep scarlet and ornamental gold. Her hair was covered by a golden veil and her eyes were ringed heavily with kohl pencil. Even her scarlet lipstick had been replaced by a glimmering rose-pink, which made her mouth look so much softer.
She had told him that she wanted her first appearance in his land to be as traditional as possible and he respected her for her thoughtfulness. And she looked, he thought with a sudden wrench of longing, absolutely beautiful. A delectable mixture of East and West, she seemed to represent the very best of both their cultures.
‘Your appearance is faultless,’ he said slowly. ‘You need not concern yourself on that score. And as king, my people will accept what I tell them to accept.’
His reassuring words gave her a moment of comfort and she clung to it, as a child would to a security blanket. ‘And what about your brother, Kamal?’
He flicked her a glance. ‘What about him?’
‘I’m … looking forward to meeting him.’
His smile was bland. ‘That won’t be happening immediately, I’m afraid, since he has decided to ride off into the desert in order to escape the rigours of court life.’
Ella swallowed. Or to escape from having to meet her? she wondered. ‘Didn’t you say that he’s been running the country while you were away fighting the war? Won’t he mind handing back the reins to you?’ She hesitated. ‘Power can be addictive stuff.’
He gave a hard smile. ‘Kamal is going to have to get used to a lot of changes,’ he said. ‘And to build a new role for himself. Because, of course, of much greater significance to him than my returning to rule is the fact that you are carrying my child.’ And hadn’t he always led his brother to believe that he had no desire to procreate? Would Kamal think that he had broken his word and thus changed both their destinies?
Ella’s voice broke into his troubled thoughts.
‘And that child will one day inherit?’ she asked.
‘Only if it is a son.’ His black eyes bored into her. ‘Is it a son, Ella? Do you know that already?’
She felt colour rising in her cheeks as his gaze washed over her. ‘No, no, I don’t. They couldn’t tell on the first scan and I …’
‘What?’
She shook her head, hating the way that he made her feel like a butterfly pinned onto a piece of cardboard. ‘I don’t want to know!’ she said fiercely. ‘I don’t want that kind of pressure spoiling the pregnancy in any way. I don’t want you being pleased if it’s a boy and your brother being pleased if it’s a girl, so that I’ll end up feeling tugged both ways. I want the surprise of not knowing. Otherwise it will be like knowing what all your Christmas presents are before you actually get around to unwrapping them.’
For a moment, he smiled. ‘I’m afraid we don’t celebrate Christmas in Kashamak,’ he offered drily.
‘Well, your birthday presents, then.’
‘I wouldn’t really know about that either.’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re not trying to tell me you never had any birthday presents?’
‘So what if I didn’t?’ He shrugged. ‘My father was too busy for that kind of thing. Sometimes he remembered, sometimes not. It wasn’t important.’
Ella’s heart gave a funny little flip. Of course it was important, especially to a child. It was the one day a year when you could guarantee that all the attention would be focused on you. You got the feeling that you were loved and cared for. Even when money was at its tightest her mother had always managed to pull together some sort of celebration. And it couldn’t have been easy for her, she realised suddenly. Not easy at all.
‘And what about your mother, didn’t she want a birthday cake for her little boy?’
Silently, he cursed her overemotional use of language. Was that deliberate? Was she trying to get under his skin, in the way that women always did? ‘My mother wasn’t around,’ he clipped out.
‘What happened to her?’ Ella’s voice softened. ‘You never mention her, Hassan. Did she … did she die?’
The knuckles of his fists gleamed white as Hassan clenched his hands over his silk-clad thighs. ‘No, she didn’t die—at least, not then. She left us to find a different kind of life, and I don’t particularly want to talk about it. Especially not now at such a significant moment. Look, here are my advisers and staff come out to greet us. Prepare yourself, Ella, for I am sure you know how important first impressions are.’
Hearing the finality in his voice as he halted the discussion about his childhood, Ella straightened her golden veil with trembling fingers. She certainly remembered her first impression of him. How his dark and proudly arrogant beauty had seemed to call out to something deep inside her. How for one blissful night she thought she’d found it, only to have it swept away by his callous desertion of her. Had that been just an illusion? she wondered. And had she been guilty of imagining a special bond where none existed, as a way of justifying her own wanton behaviour?
The powerful car drew to a halt and her memories melted away in the presence of a practical dilemma. Because how on earth did you prepare yourself to face people as their brand-new queen?
‘Do they know I’m pregnant?’ she asked.
At this he gave an odd kind of smile. ‘Of course not, though it is fairly obvious to all but the most careless observer. But you need not concern yourself with that, Ella. Don’t you know what they say about royalty? Never complain and never explain. There will be no need for any kind of announcement. Many of my people will not realise the good news until a child is presented to them, for you will largely be hidden from view.’
