The Mistress Bride

She heard him move, her body tensed up as muscles tightened in screaming protest. The tears came back, so strong this time that they set her throat working and her soft mouth quivering. She closed her eyes over the tears, clamped her quivering mouth shut and clenched her hands into two tight fists at her sides while she waited for him to take the hint and leave, or ignore the hint with his usual arrogance.

The silence hummed, the tension along with it. After what felt like an age and no more sound came from behind her, Evie began slowly to relax the tension out of her body. He had shown sensitivity for once and left her alone, she assumed.

And on a long, long heavy sigh that seemed to come from the very lowest regions of her she kicked the strappy high-heeled shoes from her aching feet, released her hair from its uncomfortable knot, then lowered herself on to the bone-dry short-shorn grass to sit staring out at the glassy still lake. In a little while, she told herself, she would go back into the castle and creep away to her room. Then tomorrow, another sigh. Tomorrow was just another day fraught with a different set of pressing problems. Tomorrow would be deal with mother time, deal with Raschid time.

Somewhere in the darkness an owl began hooting, sounding bleak and lonely as if it was calling hopelessly for a mate. A fish rose to the water's surface, its tail making a lazy flapping noise as it rolled over, setting the bouquet of flowers bobbing again in the ripples it left behind. She really shouldn't have done that, Evie mused guiltily. Christina would be so hurt to know that her lovely bouquet had finished up in such a watery grave. She shivered, and her knees came up, her arms wrapping round them, her loosened hair sliding in a thick silk curtain around her slender shoulders as she lowered her weary brow to rest it against her knees.

The feel of a jacket dropping across her hunched shoulders should have surprised her, but oddly it didn't. She would have been more surprised if Raschid had simply walked away and left her to it.

'I thought you'd gone,' she said.

'No,' was all he replied, and dropped down on the grass beside her.

Turning her face on her knees so she could look at him through the curtain of her hair, Evie found herself gazing at a sombre profile that was, even so, the most beautifully structured profile she had ever seen. Like her, his knees were up, but parted so his wrists could rest upon them. His dress shirt stood out bright in the moonlight; his skin was like polished bronze.

Her heart swelled in her breast, swelled and swelled until she thought it was going to burst under the power of her wretched love for him.

He turned to look at her, sombre-eyed and flat-mouthed. 'Are you ready to tell me what is wrong, now?'

No, she thought miserably. I'm not ready. I'll never be ready. And she turned her face to stare moodily at the lake so she didn't have to look at him.

'Your mother thinks you are ill,' he added when it became obvious that she wasn't going to say anything.

I am, she thought. Soul-sick and heartbroken. 'I didn't know you had that kind of conversation with my mother,' she remarked.

'I don't, usually,' he dryly admitted. 'But this one took the form of a confrontation.'

Ah, Evie was very intimate with those kinds of conversations with her mother. 'I'm not ill,' she assured-him. 'Then what the hell is the matter with you?' he rasped, suddenly losing all patience. 'Because it has been patently obvious to me for weeks now that something certainly is!' 'I thought I told you I didn't want another verbal battle tonight!' she snapped right back.

'Then don't turn this into one!' He turned the tables on her as quick as a flash. 'You are my life, my heart, my soul, Evie,' he added gruffly. 'I would do anything for you; I thought you knew that.'

'Except marry me,' she said, then grimaced at herself for stupidly blurting it out like that.

His answering sigh was heavy. It wasn't words but good grief, it spoke volumes in other ways. 'Is that what this is all about?'

'No,' she denied, and went to get up, but his hand came out to press her down again.

'Talk,' he commanded. 'Or reconcile yourself to the uncomfortable prospect of spending the night right here.'

He meant it, too; that tough macho gleam was in his eyes again. On a sigh she subsided. He let go of her, recognising the sigh as a gesture of defeat. Evie turned her gaze back to the moonlit lake once again, felt a tightness pull around her chest, and said flatly, 'I'm pregnant.'

CHAPTER FIVE

As ANNOUNCEMENTS went, this one truly took the trophy. To his credit, Raschid didn't groan in horror or curse and shout, or demand to know how the hell she had allowed such a stupid thing to happen. All the things he certainly had a right to do.

In fact, he didn't do anything. He just continued to sit there, as silent as death, as still as stone, utilising that impressive bank of self-discipline Evie knew he possessed to hold himself in check while he attempted to take the shocking news in. And it was awful-worse, much worse than she'd even envisaged this moment was going to be because she knew this man so very well, and knowing him meant she understood exactly what his silence was actually saying. Raschid's world and all it meant to him had just been effectively brought tumbling down around him. And this was more than just the noble Arab prince holding his emotions in check as he had been trained from birth to do in times of disaster. He was sitting there like that because he was literally paralysed with dismay. 'Say something,' she prompted when she could stand his silence no longer.

'Like what?' he asked, then admitted grimacingly, 'I find I am struck speechless.'

Well, speechless just about covered it, Evie thought painfully. 'How, where and when seem good places to start,' she huskily suggested.

'Okay ... ' At last he moved, turning his head to look at her, though Evie couldn't bring herself to look back at him now.

'How?' He began with her first suggestion.

Her hunched shoulders gave a helpless shrug. 'I don't know how,' she answered honestly. 'Somewhere along the line, my

birth control has let me down but I just don't know how it did. The where depends on the when,' she went on huskily. 'Which was about six weeks ago,' she calculated. 'Which in turn probably means it happened during the weekend we spent together on your yacht in the Mediterranean,' she assumed. 'Though I will know better when I see a doctor ... '