The Mistress Bride

IT WAS another warm sunny day and the enclosed back yard acted like a suntrap. But Evie felt shivering cold as she let Raschid take her over to the solid wooden back gate that led out into the narrow alleyway, which ran right along the row of terraced cottages.

They paused there in the sunshine, Raschid sliding back the two bolts that secured the gate then going still with his hand on the latch while he listened for the sound of his car arriving. Evie stood beside him with her face lowered where she stared blankly at the white towel still covering her scalded arm. The skin was burning a little, but it didn't seem to matter, not when her whole world felt as though it was slowly but surely falling in on her. Raschid put a hand to her waist, then sent it travelling up her trembling spine until it reached her nape where his long fingers gently closed so he could use his thumb beneath her chin to lift her eyes to his.

Her heart turned over at the dark glow she could see burning in his eyes. He was so handsome, she thought tragically, so dark and smooth and so right for her somehow, how was she ever going to survive without him?

'I love you,' he murmured huskily. 'Don't let anyone or anything ever try to convince you otherwise.'

And he did love her. Evie only had to look into those rich golden eyes to know it was true love that burned from them.

'But love isn't enough, is it?' she said, her mouth quivering on the true wretchedness of that comment.

Bending his head, he caught her quivering mouth, tasted it, soothed it with his own firmer lips. 'I will find a way through this,' he gruffly vowed. 'You are mine. I am yours. Nothing can change that.'

Evie wished with all her aching heart that she could believe that-but she couldn't. 'Duty can,' she replied. Raschid didn't answer but his expression clouded, and she couldn't even swallow against the thickness that was suddenly clogging her throat. The car drew up beyond the gate then. Lifting the latch, Raschid stepped out to check the alleyway before he opened the rear door of a silver Mercedes then quickly urged Evie inside. 'Right-go!' he commanded the driver as he got in beside her.

It was the sheer urgency in his voice that made Evie turn to look through the car's rear window. A man with half a dozen cameras hanging around his neck had just appeared at the other end of the alleyway. He was desperately trying to bring one of those cameras up to his face as they took off across the cobbles at speed.

'It's all right,' Raschid soothed, seeing Evie's anxious expression. 'He is on foot. By the time he has collected his own form of transport we will be gone.'

'But he now knows you're with me,' she pointed out heavily. Which made for just another bit of delicious scandal for them to feed upon.

'I will always be with you,' he replied with a flat-voiced sincerity that only helped to heighten her anxiety.

For how could he make a pronouncement like that knowing it was only going to cause more distress for all of them?

'Raschid-'

'No.' His hand came out, reaching across the small gap separating them to close warmly around one of her own tightly clenched hands. 'We will not discuss this now,' he ordained. 'You are too upset and I am too confused by what my father has done for either of us to discuss anything constructively.'

'But-'

'But,' he intruded, turning dark eyes on her that issued one very dire warning, 'you are carrying my child, Evie, which is one fact we are not in any confusion about. And that child will have my name no matter how many problems we have to surmount to reach that goal.'

A vow from the soul that filled her breast with warm honeyed love for this man who valued her so dearly. But it didn't stop her mind from gnawing away at the problems they were about to face as the car reached the end of the alleyway and shot out on to the main street, heading towards the river.

The sound of Raschid's mobile phone bursting into life brought her sharply to attention. His hand left hers, and for the next few minutes he talked at length in his own language. His voice sounded hard, the answers he was receiving to any questions he shot out doing nothing to ease his temper.

'They're all over the place,' he muttered when he eventually sat back again. 'Besieging my apartment block as well as your cottage! I could really have done without all of this!'

He could? Evie's head was beginning to swim with it all. 'You got me out of my house so fast, I haven't even got my purse,' she said, adding to his problems. 'And we didn't lock the doors behind us.'

'Your cottage will have been secured within minutes of us leaving,' Raschid assured her. 'And you can survive without your purse, surely?' He was terse to the point of being cutting, and Evie turned her face sideways and pretended he wasn't there. She wasn't hurt or offended by his tone; in fact she sympathised with it. The whole situation had exploded into something way beyond what either of them could control, and that was what was so hard to swallow.

Being out of control. 'How is your arm?'

Evie glanced down at it, rather confused to see it was still wrapped in the white towel. 'It still burns a little,' she replied.

But then, so did her eyes; they felt sore and gritty through lack of sleep and a dire need to sob her heart out. Perhaps he knew it, because, on a heavy sigh, Raschid slid across the gap separating them so he could pull her against him.

'Asim will take care of your arm as soon as we reach my apartment,' he murmured. 'All we need to do first is get past the press waiting for us there, and that should be easy enough when they cannot follow us underground, into the car park.'

'Then what?' she asked. 'Do we hide away like fugitives in your apartment instead of my cottage?' There didn't seem to be much difference between the two locations to Evie.

'At least I can protect you there,' he countered. 'Because,' he then added very grimly, 'this is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.'

The beginning, not the end. Evie shuddered. 'Sometimes I wish I'd never met you,' she sighed.

Surprisingly he laughed, albeit ruefully. 'Only sometimes?' he mocked. 'There is a chance for us yet, then.' It was merely one of those light, throw-away remarks people made in times of trouble that really did not mean anything in particular. But still, it weighed heavily on Evie's mind as the car swept up to the security-protected entrance to his basement car park, because she didn't think they had a chance whichever way you looked at it.