The Mistress Bride

'It's over between Raschid and I,' she heard herself announce, and wondered how she was able to say the words without breaking up inside.

But what was worse was that Harry was painfully unsurprised by the announcement. 'The rumours about it were rife last night,' he nodded. 'Something to do with his father being ill and him having to go home and marry before he can officially take over from the old man ... '

For a space of thirty long, dreadful seconds, Evie didn't move, didn't breathe, didn't function on any basic level. Harry's words simply hung there in block letters in front of her while other words uttered in the heat of the moment began to take on an entirely different shape. Words like: 'Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me? The problems they are going to cause?'

Had his father laid down an ultimatum during Raschid’s last visit home? Was that why those two weeks had been so important? 'And what does rumour say, exactly?' she asked carefully.

Changing gear with a flourish, he sent her a small grimace. 'That he has a month to sort his life out before he goes home to marry some cousin of a cousin or some such person. Is it true?' he asked curiously. 'Is that why he's finished it?'

Evie didn't answer. She didn't do anything but sit there staring directly ahead of her while new horrors settled over old horrors. Some cousin of a cousin being the new horror.

For Evie knew all about Aisha. Raschid had never been anything but honest about his cousin of a cousin who had been nothing more than a shadow in the wings of his life while she grew from child to woman enough to marry a prince.

'Are you okay?' Harry asked. 'You've gone awfully pale .. .'

No, Evie thought. I'm not okay. 'What a mess!' Raschid had muttered. 'What a damned mess!' He hadn't been joking. The whole thing was a mess! She had already been living on borrowed time with him when she'd broken her news last night. And, what was worse, she had probably been the last one to know it! It didn't matter. Nothing seemed to matter any more. It was over. In every which way she looked at it, the affair was most definitely over. She only wished now that she had kept her stupid mouth shut about the baby. At least then she could have walked away from him with some semblance of dignity intact. Now?

The whole wretched thing was just destined to get ugly. With their families, with the press, between themselves. For she was not going to go down in history as the woman who held her Arab sheikh lover to ransom with a baby Evie grimly promised herself. And Raschid, she was sure, was not going to go down in history as the Arab sheikh who deserted his pregnant mistress to marry elsewhere. The car ate up the miles while Evie sat there so sunk in the wallowing mire of her own muddy thinking that she wasn't aware of the frequent worried glances Harry kept on sending her, or what he was seeing when he did look at her. She didn't look well. There were bruises around her eyes and a white ring of tension around her mouth. Her skin was too pale, and her fingers trembled where they rested on her lap.

They arrived in Chelsea where her mews cottage stood only a short walk away from the World Aid Foundation, where she worked on a purely voluntary basis, drumming up gifts of money from the wealthy. The cottage belonged to Julian. It was one of several properties the family owned in and around London. Her mother resided in something similar in Kensington. And Julian himself used a classy apartment not far from Hyde Park. Great to have money, Evie bleakly acknowledged. Great to able to do what you wanted when you wanted to do it without having to consider the cost. Great to know that she could bring up her baby without having to accept a single penny from Raschid to do it, she tagged on cynically.

The car had stopped. Looking around a little dazedly, Evie realised that Harry had already got out and was striding towards the boot. She climbed out too, the sunlight just managing to seep over the rooftops feeling warm on her icy face. Walking to the back of the car, she waited until Harry had closed the boot lid then went to take her bag from him.

'Thanks for the lift, Harry. I...'

The bag was swung out of her reach. 'I'm coming in with you,' he insisted.

'But your foal. You should .. .'

'The least you can do is offer me a cup of coffee for my trouble,' he pointed out gently.

'Of course, I'm sorry,' she murmured contritely, and turned to cross the pavement to her white-painted front door.

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The telephone was ringing even as she stepped into the house with Harry right behind her. Evie froze where she stood, counting off the rings until the answering machine took over. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears as the machine chanted out her recorded message. A moment after that and her mother's voice came whipping across the room towards her.

'Evie, I don't know what you think you're playing at, walking out like this. God knows what the Beverleys are going to think!' A sigh rasped like sandpaper across the room. 'I don't care what a mess your private life is in, this is so bad-mannered! Now I suppose I will have to make up excuses for you. It just isn't fair, Evie! Don't you think I spend enough time making excuses for you as it is?'

Another sigh, then came a few tense moments when nothing happened while her mother seemed to be getting a hold on her temper. 'Look,' she said, sounding marginally less aggressive. 'Call me here when you get home. I need to know you arrived there safely.'

'You didn't tell her you came away with me?' Harry asked when the call had finished.

Evie shook her head. 'I just said I'd got a lift home,' she explained, forcing her stiff legs to move towards the kitchen.

She hadn't wanted to involve Harry's name in all of this; it would cause too many complications when things were complicated enough. Her mother didn't need any help to cast Harry in the role of saviour. Give Lucinda an inch and she would take a mile.

'Are you going to call her back?'

Evie didn't answer. Instead she picked up the kettle and took it over to the sink to fill it with fresh water. She didn't want to talk to anyone-not even Harry - though it would be churlish under the circumstances to tell him that. 'Evie .. .'

The phone started ringing again, cutting off whatever Harry had been about to say and turning Evie to stone again where she stood clutching the kettle while she waited to hear who was trying to contact her this time. A moment after that and Raschid's voice came, sounding hard and tight and very, very weary. 'Pick up the phone, Evie,' he commanded. 'I know you are there .. .' Evie didn't move. The seconds ticked by, the silence picking at tautly stretched nerve-ends. 'Evie!' Impatience roughened his voice now. 'This is foolish! You are being foolish! Pick up the phone!'

'How does he know you are here?' Harry asked curiously. 'Would your mother have told him?'

Incapable of speech, Evie gave a small shake of her head. Her mother would rather die than tell Raschid anything. No, Raschid must have seen her leave, she decided.

Like herself, she presumed, he must have spent a lousy sleepless night wondering what the hell he was going to do about her, and had probably been staring out of his bedroom window when she and Harry took off together. A disembodied sigh rushed impatiently around the room when her refusal to comply made Raschid angry. Teeth clenched, body-the very muscles that made her heart beat-all locked into a dreadful straining paralysis, Evie waited to hear what was going to come next.