The Mistress Bride

'You reassure him, then,' Evie suggested coldly. 'The doctors say I mustn't get stressed, and Raschid stresses me.' With that, she turned her head away to stare fixedly out of the window. It was unbelievable what the last twenty-four hours had done to her. It was as if the trauma of almost losing her baby had forced her to grow a protective shell around herself that nobody could penetrate.

It had also brought her mother crashing down from the haughty pedestal she usually sat upon. That frightening ride in an ambulance with all sirens blaring had shaken her more than she cared to admit. For a while last night she'd truly believed she was going to lose her daughter. Shocks like those focused the mind on what was really important in life.

And nothing could be more important than life itself. By some miracle the doctors had managed to stem the bleeding and keep the baby safe, but at what cost to her daughter's sanity Lucinda wasn't really sure, because in all Evie's twenty-three years she had never known her to cut herself off from others as coldly as she was doing now.

'I thought you loved him,' she murmured. 'In the name of that love, doesn't he deserve a hearing?' 'No,' was the blunt reply.

'Evie-'

'I'm tired now,' Evie interrupted, and closed her eyes, bit deep into the inner cushion of her lower lip, and silently prayed that her mother would drop the subject!

r /> Surprisingly she slept. She didn't even hear her mother leave the hospital room. Next time she awoke it was dark outside and a nurse was bending over her.

'You need to eat something, Miss Delahaye,' she said. 'You've gone over twenty-four hours without food and that isn't good for your baby.'

'Can I get out of bed?' she asked; she needed the bathroom badly.

But the nurse sadly shook her head. 'Not yet, I'm afraid.' Which meant that Evie had to suffer the indignity of using a bedpan.

Which also didn't help her mood when, washed by the nurse and her hair combed and plaited, the mobile tray that held her dinner was moved across Evie's lap and the nurse said gently, 'You have a visitor. He's been waiting for hours. Will you agree to see him, for just a minute?'

Evie stared down at the bowl of soup that suddenly tasted like sawdust in her mouth when only seconds before it had tasted rather pleasantly of chicken.

'I don't think he's going to leave here until you do see him,' the nurse added. 'He arrived late last night, and hasn't left the waiting room since except to wash and change his clothes in one of the spare rooms along the corridor. Your mother has pleaded with him, his companion has pleaded with him and we have pleaded with him. He doesn't even acknowledge that we've spoken! I have never come up against such intransigence in all my life!'

Watch this space, Evie thought coldly, and went on with her soup without making a single comment. After a while the nurse sighed and left her to it. A little while later Evie curled up on her side, folded her arms protectively over her stomach, and went to sleep thinking about Raschid sitting there in the waiting room.

The next time she came awake, a grey dawn was just beginning to lighten the bedroom and there was a man standing at the bottom of her bed, reading her medical chart.

He glanced up when she moved. 'Good morning, Miss Delahaye.' He smiled before returning his attention to whatever he was reading. 'Your child is most determined to stay exactly where he is,' he remarked lightly. 'I suspect a mixing of two sets of very stubborn genes must give him his tenacity.'

'Asim,' Evie breathed. 'What are you doing in here?' 'I am Sheikh Raschid's personal physician,' he reminded her. 'Which now means I am his child's personal physician. '

'Is that a joke?' she demanded, using her hands to slide herself up the pillows and into a sitting position.

'No joke,' Asim blandly denied. 'Where Sheikh Raschid's child goes, I go from now on- Oh, come,' he said when he saw her expression. 'We are good friends now, are we not? You do not find me too overbearing. We will get along very well together, I am certain of it.'

'And where does Raschid fit into all of this?' Evie enquired acidly.

'At this precise moment he sits exactly where he has been sitting since he arrived here two evenings ago,' Asim replied. 'Where he now awaits my report on his child's state of health.'

'But not the mother's,' Evie bitterly assumed from all of that.

'At this stage in the proceedings, the child's health depends entirely on the mother's health so of course she matters. But as for the woman,' Asim continued smoothly, 'he accepts now that he is beyond her forgiveness. Which matters little when it is clear that he will never learn to forgive himself.'

'If you're trying to play on my sympathies, Asim,' Evie sighed, reaching out for the flask of water sitting on her bedside cabinet, 'it isn't working.'

'Here,' Asim offered instantly. 'Let me do that for you.' Taking the flask from her, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the chilled water into a glass before handing it to her. In silence he stood beside her and watched her drink the water, took the glass from her when she had finished and smoothly replaced both glass and flask back on the cabinet.

Then he pleaded soberly, 'See him, madam. For two nights and a day he has neither slept nor eaten and I am seriously worried about him.'

'He kept me waiting for two weeks before his henchmen came to evict me.'

'They were not his henchmen.' Asim denied the charge. 'And if you force him to he will wait two weeks in that waiting room just down the corridor, I promise you.' Evie could believe that, knowing the man as well as she did.

'Okay,' she wearily conceded, deciding that she might as well get it over with. 'I'll see him.'

'Thank you.' Asim sent her one of those bows that reminded her of Crown Prince Hashim's messengers, and she shuddered.